


Drive Me Crazy

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Drive Me Crazy (1999)
Genre: 90's Music, 90's Rom-Com AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Drive Me Crazy AU, Everyone goes to the Academy, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Jemma's POV, Light Angst, Multi, Mutual Pining, Past Simmons/Ward and Fitz/Raina, Pining, Romantic Comedy, SHIELD Academy, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1870539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons is a popular and well-respected scientist at SHIELD Academy whose life is turned upside down when her boyfriend, Grant, breaks up with her a month before the Academy’s year-end gala. After recovering from the shock, Jemma comes up with a solution to save her reputation: find a guy to help her make Grant jealous. Jemma then teams up with her dorm neighbor, prankster and engineering genius Leo Fitz, whose girlfriend also recently dumped him. Neither Jemma nor Fitz expect their charade to lead them down a completely different path.</p><p>(Loosely based on the 1999 rom-com.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tearin' Up My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is a "what-if" AU, in which canon is more or less irrelevant. Hydra doesn't exist. This Academy is a college-equivalent, so Fitz, Simmons, Ward, Raina, and Trip are all roughly the ages of college seniors (i.e. younger than canon), although much of the work being done is probably the equivalent of graduate-work for geniuses. Skye's 21, but a freshman. All main characters will be involved eventually. FitzSimmons started at the Academy at 18, although the basics of their early friendship are the same. The major characterization "what-if" is based on the idea that Simmons could probably study her way into being less awkward if she so desired.
> 
> Thank you SO much to MC MK for editing every single one of these chapters, and for soothing my neuroses!
> 
> An accompanying AU gifset for this fic can be found [here](http://agentverbivore.tumblr.com/post/99362001488/drive-me-crazy-a-fitzsimmons-rom-com-au-read-it)!

“I can’t _believe_ he dumped you a month before the gala. What a tool!” Skye stretched her legs out and crossed her arms, frowning at her mentor. Until recently, the lanky freshman had understood computers better than people, but didn't keep her from having opinions about pretty much everyone. 

Jemma shrugged and adjusted her safety goggles. She was rearranging some new specimens in her lab and hiding from the rest of the school. “He’ll see the error of his ways soon enough.” 

Grant was gorgeous, muscular, and a star recruit for SHIELD’s field operations, and he’d told her often enough that none of the spec ops women were nearly as beautiful as she was. (And, as a biologist who excelled at preparation, she knew how to do things in the bedroom that would have boggled the minds of most of her peers.) They’d been dating for a little over a year and were at the top of the Academy’s social hierarchy – everyone who was anyone knew about promising spec-ops recruit Grant Ward and brilliant biochemist Dr. Jemma Simmons. The pre-graduation gala of their senior year was crucial for impressing the SHIELD higher-ups and ensuring both of their promotions out of the Academy to SHIELD stardom.

Last night, however, Grant had pulled her aside after another successful evening of networking with the top Academy brass and told her it was over. Jemma had watched him walk away with a slinky spec-ops agent and felt like all of her plans had just dissipated in front of her.

“Yeah, but what if he _doesn’t_? You need a date to the gala. And I thought you said he was going to make sure that SHIELD waived your field test. How’re you gonna get past that now?”

Skye was essentially vocalizing all of the thoughts that had kept Jemma awake last night. She had lain in her bed, twisting her sheets into knots as she ignored the sounds of machinery and tinkering from the dorm room next to hers. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she deserved Grant, per se – it was just that before coming to the Academy, she’d always been an outsider. The awkward genius that couldn’t put two sentences together without listing one theorem or another.

When she’d arrived at the Academy, all of a sudden she fit in like she’d never had before. She wasn’t popular or successful for the first two years, and that was fine until it started affecting her work. Her place outside of the Academy’s social scene was stymieing her ability to best demonstrate her abilities, so she’d studied the successful scientists and imitated them. She figured out how to get invited to parties, and how to meet people with the connections to get the best labs, supplies, and funding, and _finally_ she began getting real recognition for her work.

Since she had started dating Grant not long after creating this new persona, their relationship somehow felt integral to her success. It was easy here for brilliant scientists to get ignored or be assigned sub-par labs if they didn’t know the right people – so Jemma had learned how to meet the right people, with Grant at her side. Would that all disappear without him? Following many hours of tossing, turning, and fitful dozing, Jemma had woken up that morning and convinced herself that Grant wasn’t the key to her success; she’d become renowned before dating him, thanks to her study on dendrotoxins and their myriad applications in the field. But having him around had certainly been useful and, if she was being honest, fun.

Jemma sighed, and took off her goggles. “I don’t know, Skye.”

“Well, you definitely need a new date to the gala, that’s for sure.” Skye had a gleam in her eyes that made Jemma nervous. The younger girl had a penchant for bossing Jemma around, even though _she_ was the one who had taken the former hacker under her wing and taught her how to work within the Academy’s antiquated social politics. “Or you could try to win Grant back. Though, even those biceps might not be worth the trouble.” She made a face; although they both agreed that Grant was handsome, Skye had never warmed up to him, much to Jemma’s consternation. 

“Convincing Grant to come back would certainly be the easiest solution,” Jemma mused.

“But if that doesn’t work, you’ll still need a date.” Skye popped a piece of gum into her mouth and pulled out her phone.

Jemma threw up her hands, goggles soaring haphazardly behind her. “And where exactly do you expect me to find someone who can both impress the dignitaries at the gala _and_ help me get through the field test requirements?”

The lab’s glass door swished open behind her, and someone cleared their throat. Skye raised an eyebrow and Jemma turned to see a fellow student about her height with messy, sand-brown, curly hair. Leo Fitz stood by the door, holding up the wayward goggles. “Someone lose these?”

Jemma eked out a tight smile and reached over the steel table separating them. “Yes, thank you, Dr. Fitz.” He dropped the goggles into her hand as if he was loathe to touch her and then unconsciously wiped his hands on his trousers to underscore that impression. “Can we help you with something?” 

Fitz glanced at Skye, who gave him a cheeky wave over her phone, and then back to Jemma. “We’ve run out of replacement power cells for the holo-sim-generator.”

“We’ve got some in that cupboard, third shelf down.”

He strode to where she was pointing, retrieved the supplies, and stood sharply, brushing away some mystery dust. Jemma watched him impassively and gave a small nod when he met her gaze.

“Thanks, then.” He disappeared through the glass doors and Jemma released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d almost forgotten how much she’d missed his Scottish accent.

“Wow. What the hell was that?” Skye stood and leaned on the table next to Jemma, who shook her head and started putting away her supplies.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, the tension in here shot up by about a hundred the second you saw him.”

Jemma paused at the hook for her lab coat. “We haven’t spoken in quite some time.”

Somehow, even though they were neighbors, they’d managed to barely see each other in the year since they’d stopped being friends, let alone speak. The last time had been as Jemma was leaving for a date with Grant a couple months ago, wearing the type of cocktail dress she would never have even dreamed of buying when she first arrived at the Academy. Fitz had been returning to his room just as Jemma was leaving. It hadn’t been more than an awkward smile and a banal greeting, but Jemma had felt his eyes follow her down the hallway. She’d gotten used to suppressing the urge to run back to him by then, but she’d been testy for the rest of the evening.

When Jemma turned back to where Skye stood, she ignored the piercing stare on her friend’s face. Despite their outward differences, the two women got along well, and Skye understood Jemma better than almost anyone else on campus. The only other person who had ever understood her that well had just sped out of the lab as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.

Skye gave a small huff. “Okay, there’s obviously more to it than that, but I’ll make you tell me later. – I have an idea.”

“What?” Jemma asked, struggling to fit her notes and textbooks into her bag.

“Did you hear that last week Fitz saved Dean May from being frozen? Some stupid freshman left a test capsule in the pool and it activated when May was doing laps.”

Jemma crooked an eyebrow at Skye. “That’s not an idea, Skye, that’s a statement of fact.”

Skye rolled her eyes. “The point is that May pretty publicly said that she was going to make sure that Fitz ‘ _did well_ ’ once he graduated.” 

That statement stopped Jemma in the middle of reaching for a notebook. “May works heavily with field ops.” Skye nodded. “So Fitz might actually be able to help me get into the field...” She stopped mid-sentence and shook her head. “He’d never agree to it, Skye. He hates me.” Her stomach twisted at the thought, but she pushed it away. 

“Maybe you can find a _quid pro quo_ or something.” As Jemma shook her head, Skye crossed her arms. “Look, you’re in a bind – you’ve got four weeks until the gala, and right now your best shot is to get Grant back. The smart thing would be to ask Fitz if he’ll help, and soon. Don’t argue, you know I’m right.” Jemma closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Skye sighed before speaking more quietly. “I know you won't tell me what happened between you two, but it doesn’t look like it can get any worse.”

Worse than alienating and abandoning her best friend? _No, probably not_. Jemma took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right.” 

“No shit,” Skye quipped, grabbing her bag as Jemma raised her hand to the light switch.

The two women strolled through the crowded hallway and Jemma tried to resist the desire to withdraw into the shy, awkward scientist she’d been when she first arrived at the Academy, and first met Fitz, four years ago. She felt like every other person was staring at her, thinking ‘ _she was dumped by super-recruit Ward, what’s_ wrong _with her_?’

“I have no idea how to even talk to Fitz anymore,” Jemma muttered, narrowly avoiding colliding with a crowd of hyperactive sophomores.

“Put on that silk blouse you wore to the movies with Grant last Saturday. That’d have any guy salivating at your feet.” Skye’s grin faltered when she saw the look on Jemma’s face. “Oh, come on. You know it’s worked on Grant more than once.”

“Fitz isn’t like that,” she replied, nervously sweeping her hair back behind her ear. Forget applying to the Academy, getting in, and working her way up to being top of her class – an impending conversation with Fitz was quickly beginning to seem far more daunting.

 

\------

 

It took Jemma an hour and a half to get Skye to stop asking her what she was going to say to Fitz, and another two hours for her to work it out for herself. After they’d grabbed dinner at the dining hall, Skye went off to meet a mystery date and Jemma forced herself to get ready to knock on Fitz’s door. Before she could get back to the dorm, however, she saw a familiar figure in the middle of the quad arguing with a curly-haired brunette in a flower dress. 

The voices were low but clearly heated, their shadows dark and long in the late-evening sun. Jemma shifted from foot to foot, not wanting to interrupt but also not wanting to miss her opportunity.

The girl separated herself from Fitz and strode brusquely across the grounds. “Come on, Raina! Don’t leave me like this!” came Fitz’s voice, accent thick with a pain that Jemma recognized better than she would have liked. The girl in the flower dress didn’t turn around or acknowledge the plea, and Jemma watched Fitz kick over a garbage can in frustration. It clattered to the ground, and he crouched down, hands over the back of his head. A few seconds passed before he unfolded himself, swiped his sleeve across his face, and started picking up the mess he’d made.

Jemma waited a few seconds and slowly approached him, clutching a textbook to her stomach like a shield of her own. “Hello, Dr. Fitz.”

He looked up from the styrofoam containers he’d picked up, eyes red-rimmed but dry, and gave a short burst of laughter. “Today’s just that sort of day, apparently.” Fitz dumped the last of the trash into the can and dropped the lid back into place. “What do you need, Dr. Simmons?”

Jemma licked her lips and tried to steady her nerves. “I was wondering if you might agree to help me –”

“And why would I do that?” Fitz crossed his arms and stared back at her.

It had been a long time since she’d been faced with his cold anger, and it stung more than she remembered. This wasn’t going to work if she was weak like this; she’d end up begging for forgiveness, and she’d promised herself that wasn’t going to happen. Jemma took a deep breath, slowly infusing life into the social persona she’d been cultivating at every cocktail party and networking event for the past year and a half. Her armor up again, she smiled.

“Because it seems that you might have a similar problem. Am I right in understanding that you just broke up with your girlfriend?”

Fitz stared at her, unmoving, and then shook his head. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I can’t do this right now,” he muttered and took off in the direction of their dorm.

Jemma wouldn’t be deterred so easily, however, and jogged quickly after him. “I recently found myself single as well, at a particularly unfortunate time since I require a date for the senior gala.”

Fitz barked a laugh and kept going, speeding up ever so slightly. “I should have known. This is about your bloody career.”

She pursed her lips but let the comment slide. “I want my boyfriend back, and I would imagine you want your girlfriend back. If we team up, we should be able to make that happen.”

They’d reached the stairs to the dormitory, a building of grey cement and equally ugly on the inside, and he stopped to turn to her, a bemused expression on his face. “You’re actually serious.” 

“Quite.”

Fitz scratched the back of his head and stared over Jemma’s shoulder, in the direction the girl in the flower dress had disappeared. “How do you suggest we do that?” 

“Pretend to be dating.” Fitz snorted, and his eyes darkened, but she kept going before he could interrupt. “We’d have a month to get the whole Academy to believe it and to make them both jealous. We go to the gala and, if we’re successful, we’ll win back our dates. If we’re not successful, we’ll find out that night.”

They stood there for a moment, the dim sunset light filtering over them and casting the campus in a murky orange hue. She was reminded sharply of when they used to climb onto the roof of the library and watch the sunsets together after handing in any particularly difficult project or paper. It had been their reward, of a sort, to sit with each other and watch the motion of the campus slow in the twilight of the day. 

“Give me a night to think it over,” he answered. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

Jemma smiled and opened her mouth to respond, but before she could he’d slipped through the door. She took a deep breath and stared out at the campus; everything looked so different now, even though it was, technically, exactly the same.

 

\------

 

_“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, you spend all your bloody time at those rubbish networking events and parties!” They stood in the middle of Fitz’s room, practically toe-to-toe, shouting at each other in the silence of three A.M. Jemma had returned late from a party, slightly buzzed from drinking and being flirted with by a very attractive spec-ops recruit named Grant. She’d gone to gush to her best friend, and found him wide awake and furious._

_“This is how it works here, Fitz! If I want to make a difference in the world, I have to be able to get the lab and supplies I need, and to do that, I have to make nice with people I might not otherwise like! Sometimes the science just isn’t enough!”_

_“Yeah, well, you’ve been acting as if_ I _am not enough!”_

 _“And maybe you’re_ not _!”_

_She’d stopped, then, horrified at herself but also not willing to take it back. The moments ticked by, both of them breathing as if they’d been running, barely a foot apart. Jemma licked her dry lips, trying to calm down, and Fitz flicked his gaze down to her mouth. Just as he started to lean forward Jemma realized what he was doing and flung out her arms, hands flat against his chest._

_He pulled back immediately, hurt and embarrassment flashing hot across his face, and she shook her head, eyes wide as she struggled to find the right words. She wanted to say ‘not here, not like this,’ but instead blurted out “I can’t do this anymore, Fitz.”_

_Fitz backed away from her, lips warping into a bitter smile. Jemma felt him slipping away from her, as he had been for weeks, but had no idea how to stop it. No one ever told you how not to break up with your best friend._

_His eyes hardened and he pulled open the door. “Now you don’t have to.”_

_Exhausted and at her wits’ end, Jemma stepped past him but stopped on the threshold and turned around. She opened her mouth but lost her voice as soon as she made eye contact with him, his brimming tears twisting like a knife in her gut._

_“Good luck with your career, Dr. Simmons,” he choked out and then slammed the door in her face._

The high-pitched beeping of her alarm made Jemma jump, quickly reaching over to slam the off button. She hadn’t been sleeping, not really, having woken up early thinking about when she was going to hear from Fitz. The night they stopped talking had been the worst of her life, and she’d played it over and over in her mind, unable to keep herself from figuring out all the ways it could have – should have – gone differently. Eventually, she’d convinced herself that there was no use crying over spilled milk and had thrown herself into excelling at her other pursuits; if she couldn’t fix the one thing she wanted to, she’d be damn perfect at everything else. 

After allowing herself another ten seconds of wallowing, Jemma shook her head and got out of bed, reminding herself that she simply didn’t have the luxury of sentiment anymore. Her career had to be more important than that.


	2. Out of Reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz agrees to Jemma's plan, and they start to put the steps of their scheme into action, beginning with a party at the spec-ops recruit house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note that Vic has obviously been aged down here, and is the same year as the others. (And she is VERY different than canon - sorry, Vic!)

The morning’s lab work had been productive, but rather than study in the library that afternoon Jemma returned to her room, still fearing the eyes of the campus’ gossips. A few minutes after returning and unpacking her books, a timid knock came from the other side of the door. When she swung the door open and saw Fitz standing at the entrance, hands buried in his jeans pockets, she smiled far too widely and had to remind herself that this was a business arrangement, nothing more.

“I’m in,” he said, and strode into the room.

“Excellent! Let’s get started.” Jemma closed the door behind him.

“It’s the same,” Fitz murmured, taking in the piles of research, photography posters, and science fiction memorabilia that littered her room.

She raised an eyebrow and moved to the couch. “I wasn’t body-snatched, Fitz. All of my interests didn’t suddenly change overnight.” He frowned and opened his mouth, but she interrupted before he could start. “And that’s the first thing we need to address. Obviously we have a rather fraught personal history, and while that will add to the realism of this charade, it will also present its own challenges to working together.” Jemma sat down sideways and patted the couch in front of her. “I propose that we agree to a truce. We won’t allow our personal problems to affect our partnership, and we can simply return to our separate lives after the gala. Agreed?”

Fitz clenched his jaw and flicked his eyes over to her desk. She followed his gaze to the small TARDIS figurine that lived next to her pen holder; he’d given it to her their fourth month at the Academy, when she’d returned from what she had believed was a disastrous presentation. He’d plucked it off his own desk and pushed it into her hand while she lay, teary-eyed, on his bed. Even when she’d gotten full marks back he’d insisted that she keep it as a small reminder that not every problem is as big as it seems. It still made her smile when she had bad days.

“Agreed,” he replied without looking at her, and then dropped onto the couch. She reached her hand out to seal the deal and he just stared down at it as if she’d handed him a dead cat.

“If we’re supposed to be dating, we’re going to have to get used to intimate physical contact, particularly in public.” Jemma pointedly moved her hand even closer to him and he finally met her gaze, nodded, and shook on it.

Reaching behind her, Jemma pulled out her personal notebook and flipped to the page where she’d been jotting down notes while waiting in between experiments this morning. “I’ve made a few notes about how we began the relationship and a fake version of our past –”

Before she could stop him, Fitz plucked the book out of her hand. “Great, let me see.” Only slightly frantic, Jemma grabbed the book right back from him and held it behind her, out of his reach. “What the hell–”

“I’ll read it out loud, if you don’t mind,” she said, her voice only slightly higher than normal. There were more than few notes in there that she would feel supremely awkward about him reading. Including one, scribbled in the margin and marked with an asterisk, that simply asked: _Should I say I’m sorry?_

“Alright, then. There’s a big party tomorrow at the off-campus spec-ops recruit house, and I think that should be our first public date. I know that Grant will be there – does... your...” She faltered, not remembering the name he’d shouted after the girl in the flower dress the day before.

“Raina,” he finished flatly.

“Right. Is it likely Raina will be there?”

“She said she was leaving me for a full agent, so, no, I don’t think she’s likely to be there.”

“Ah.” Jemma stared down at her notes, not really seeing them, wondering if she should just move on. “Look, Fitz – can I call you that, now?”

His lips quirked briefly upwards. “Since we’re dating and all, it seems only right.” 

She smiled softly. “Right. I’m sorry, Fitz – about your girlfriend. I just... I wanted to say that.” 

He leaned back against the arm of the couch and looked up at the ceiling. “Yeah, me too.” Jemma turned back to her notes, but he spoke again. “What happened with you and Mr. Muscles?”

“Oh, same thing, basically,” she answered without looking up. “Found someone new, etcetera. Which is ridiculous, really, because I am so much mo...” She trailed off and glanced up at the unimpressed expression on Fitz’s face. “Well, it doesn’t matter. He’ll be reminded of what he’s missing soon enough.”

Her phone buzzed, then, and she hopped up to grab it from the desk. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him mutter, “I bet he will.”

 

\------

  

A pile of clothes toppled over on top of Jemma, who grabbed the box she’d been searching for and let two warm hands pull her from the mess of a closet. “You alright?” Fitz asked once she was free. Jemma blew a few strands of hair out of her face for comedic effect, and they both chuckled.

“I’d be better if your closet wasn’t such a hovel,” she teased, pulling open the box she’d retrieved.

They’d spent much of yesterday afternoon rehearsing their story and training Fitz how to get along with this particular side of the Academy; he hadn’t been thrilled about the latter, but Jemma insisted. Everything was going very well for their first outing as a couple – until Jemma showed up at Fitz’s door and saw what he intended to wear.

For her part, Jemma was dressed in a slinky green halter-top, skinny jeans, and flat lace-up sandals (she never really had mastered the trick of dancing in heels – or doing anything in heels, for that matter). She knew she looked fantastic, and that no one would believe they were dating if Fitz went anywhere in his horrifying Apple Jacks t-shirt. So she’d stormed in and dug around for the clothes she’d made him buy back in their first year when he hadn’t had anything to wear to the freshman Christmas party (or to anything professional). Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t worn them since they’d stopped speaking, but neither of them mentioned that.

She pulled out a patterned button-down shirt, skinny tie, and dark-wash jeans, and handed them over to Fitz. “There, that will be much better.”

He sighed. “Alright. Turn around.”

Jemma raised an eyebrow. “We’re both adults, Fitz, it’s not as if –”

“Come on, Simmons.”

“Fine!” She crossed her arms, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she did so. “And you should call me Jemma, remember?”

He paused with his hands at the hem of his shirt. “Yeah, right. Jemma.” She turned around, then, catching just a brief glimpse of his back muscles shifting as he lifted away the ratty green shirt. A few moments later, he muttered, “You can turn around again.” She did and smiled. Not only did he look five years older, he looked far more handsome, the shirt bringing out the blue in his ever-changing eyes.

“You look great, Fitz,” she said warmly, and he gave a small scoff, sitting down to pull on his trainers. Without thinking about it, Jemma moved over to him and lifted up his head, intending to fix his slightly-too-flat curls.

“Wha–” He gulped at her closeness and she shushed him.

“I’m just going to fix your hair, you mussed it all up.” She sifted deftly through the curls, and noticed that he’d squeezed his eyes shut tight. “Why do you have your eyes closed?”

“Your – I’m trying to be a gentleman.” He didn’t open his eyes, though. Jemma looked bemusedly down at him and then realized that his eye-line was directly across from her breasts, which were particularly accentuated in this top. She burst into giggles, bending over to lean on Fitz’s shoulder. He finally opened his eyes, discomfited by her amusement.

She nudged him and stepped away, catching her breath. “Oh, don’t look so miffed. You need to learn how to laugh at yourself sometimes, it’s good for the brain.”

Fitz rolled his eyes. “Alright then, let’s go.”

Jemma strode into the hallway and waited for Fitz to lock his door. He turned and gave her a weak smile; she grinned encouragingly and straightened his tie. “Ready?” She asked, tone light, and threaded her fingers through his.

“We’ll have to find out,” he muttered just loudly enough for her to hear, and they walked side-by-side to the building’s entrance. Jemma absently brushed the back of his hand with her thumb and wondered briefly why she’d felt the need for this particular gesture; Grant had never held her hand in public.

 

\------

 

The party was in full swing by the time Jemma and Fitz arrived, music pulsing in tune to flashing multi-colored lights and dancing bodies filling up every available space of the recruits’ common area. She led him through the crowd, holding his hand up above their heads, and bee-lined towards the bar-height table where Skye was waiting. The freshman had already texted Jemma three times about their tardiness and tapped her fingers grumpily on the table next to her ever-present phone. “About fucking time. I hate being at these things by myself.”

Jemma pulled Fitz’s arm around her waist and planted his hand along the top of her jeans, where a slip of skin peeked through. After a moment of tension, Fitz relaxed and flattened his palm against her hip, the edge of his thumb just barely brushing her skin.

“Sorry, Skye. We got waylaid by a fashion emergency.”

Skye wasn’t listening, however, focusing instead on the intimate position of Fitz’s hand. Raising her beer to her lips, she crooked an eyebrow. “So that’s going well.”

“Oh!” Jemma turned her head to Fitz, who looked faintly alarmed. “Skye knows. It was her idea, actually." 

Fitz relaxed and gave Skye a quick glare. “So I have you to thank for this ridiculous plan.”

Skye finished her bottle and shrugged. “What can I say, I’m a screaming genius hiding behind hipster glasses,” she replied, tone dry and eyes crinkling in amusement. “What’s the plan of attack? Dance first, drink later?”

He glanced warily over at Jemma. “I’m really not much of a dancer.”

She chuckled and squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry, neither am I.”

Skye snorted. “I don’t think you kids understand the point of these shindigs.”

“Says the hacker,” Fitz joked.

“Touché,” she answered, absent-mindedly lifting her empty bottle to her lips – before remembering it was empty and dropping it back onto the table.

“Anyone here yet?” Jemma was feeling antsy; the music’s beat was getting inside her head, and she wanted to get the obligatory reveal out of the way as quickly as possible. She was rapidly realizing that without Grant she didn’t know what to do at these things. He usually steered her to the dance floor, or hugged her to him while he argued martial arts techniques with one of the other recruits, or flirted heatedly with her in a dark corner. Without his suffusion of confidence, Jemma felt suddenly quite out of her depth.

“Everyone,” Skye said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Grant disappeared into one of the side rooms a while ago, so I dunno where he is, but Vic is across the room right now staring at you two. Aaaaand I think she’s about to head over.”

Jemma inhaled sharply. _Here we go_. She reached up to give Fitz a lingering kiss on the cheek, moving her head over just enough so that her lips brushed the edge of his ear; she ignored the shiver that ran through his entire body. “Get me a White Russian, please.” He licked his lips and nodded. Before he went, he pointed at Skye’s beer bottle and she gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

Once he had disappeared in search of the bar, Skye turned to Jemma and grinned. “He’s actually kind of cute, once you got your hands on him.”

Jemma laughed and mock-frowned, wagging her finger. “Hey now, you stay away from my man.”

Skye smirked and picked up her phone. “Believe me, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Jemma! I’m surprised to see you here,” said a smooth, sinuous voice behind her. Jemma turned to see Vic – tall, gorgeous, top of the senior recruit class, and unofficial leader of the Academy’s social hierarchy. “Not that that’s a bad thing, of course.” Vic smiled and twisted a lock of pink hair around a perfectly manicured finger. “So sad to hear about you and Grant.”

Jemma stood up a little straighter, matched the taller woman’s gaze, and rolled her eyes. “I’ve moved on. His stupid decisions aren’t my problem anymore.”

Vic laughed, a tinge of malice in her glee, and took hold of Jemma’s bare arm, steering her away from the table. Jemma glanced back at her friend, who waved her off and nodded to a returning Fitz.

The two women moved behind a nearby column and Vic turned conspiratorially to Jemma. “So you _are_ dating that guy now.” She nodded to where Fitz was juggling two bottles and Jemma’s cocktail across the dance floor.

Jemma smiled and stared after Fitz as if she couldn’t take her eyes away from him. “Yes – we had sort of a fling a while back, and after Grant made the worst decision of his life three nights ago, well – there was Fitz.” They watched him narrowly avoid a particularly rowdy dancer, swinging the drinks to safety.

“Really?” Vic said disdainfully, giving Fitz a full once over.

“I think it’s mostly a sexual thing,” Jemma replied, intentionally nonchalant, and watched Vic’s eyebrows raise almost to her hairline. She grinned and flicked her eyes to meet Vic’s. “It’s the quiet ones, you know? So eager to please.”

Vic hummed and glanced at her buzzing phone. “Well, that is what Grant always said about you.” Jemma clenched her jaw and reminded herself that if she wanted this to work, she needed Vic to believe her, and punching her would probably undermine that. “I’m needed elsewhere. Enjoy the party,” Vic purred, patting Jemma icily on the shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.

Jemma allowed her gaze to bore holes into the column, surprised when her anger melted rapidly into a grim disgust with herself. When had she become the kind of person to say things like “ _eager to please_ ” about someone else? Especially someone she had once considered a dear friend. It was as if for the past year she’d been swimming through a heady cloud of sex and popularity, and now that the latter was compromised (and the former was certainly not happening) she was finally breathing freely. She closed her eyes and shook her head. _Stay the course, Jemma_ , she told herself. _If this works, by this time next month you’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted_.

“You and Jemma are close, then?” Fitz’s voice carried far enough that Jemma could hear it from behind the column, and she peered around just enough to see them at the table. She knew she should rejoin them, but needed another minute to pull herself out of her sudden identity crisis. 

“Yeah,” Skye answered, not really paying attention, eyes focused on tapping something onto her phone. “I’m like her social protégé.” She grinned, clearly not serious, but Fitz pulled a face and took a swig from his beer bottle. 

“Of course. She’s remaking you in her own image. Who better than Jemma?” There was an undisguised vein of bitterness in his statement that made Jemma cringe.

Skye gave him a searching look and lowered her phone for the first time all evening. “You know, Simmons was the only person who would talk to me when I first got here. I sort of... I made a big mistake my first month at the Academy, and no one would even look at me after that. I mean, who knew computer nerds could be so mean, right?” She chuckled and picked at the hem of her sparkly tank top.

Fitz had lowered his bottle, bitterness turning to puzzlement and then something more unreadable. Jemma glanced away, feeling guilty for eavesdropping but desperately wanting to know where this was going.

“I met Simmons outside Dean Coulson’s office,” Skye continued. “She saw I’d been crying, and asked me what was wrong. No one else had bothered to ask me that the whole time I’d been here. So, yeah, she’s given me a few pointers on how to, you know –” She gestured vaguely at her outfit and the crowd surrounding them. “– Get along here, with all the social crap and hierarchy bullshit, but she’s also the first kind person I met. I guess what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t mind becoming a little more like her.”

Jemma blinked back an errant tear, deeply touched, and peered back around the column. Fitz was frowning down at his shoes, deep in thought – an expression that Jemma remembered very well. She made a mental note to tell Skye the feeling was mutual tomorrow, and then strode back over to the table, a firm smile plastered to her face.

Skye frowned and opened her mouth, but Fitz beat her to it. “What’s wrong?”

The freshman stopped short and gave Fitz an approving look. “What he said. You’re smiling like you were just kissed by your Great Aunt Mildred.”

Jemma laughed. “I don’t have a Great Aunt Mildred.”

“What happened, really?” Fitz asked, and she could practically see the ticker tape of his thoughts worrying that their cover had been blown already.

Jemma shook her head and took a large swig of her White Russian, breathing through the light burn down her throat. “Just Vic being herself.”

“A raging bitch,” Skye added helpfully. When Fitz exhaled in relief, she took his silence as misunderstanding. “Once she said I was pastier than a data analyst. I mean, bullshit. I’m the hottest hacker in comm-ops and everyone knows it.”

“And modest as a saint,” Jemma deadpanned, and Skye blew a raspberry in her general direction.

“It’s been swell, kids, but I’m out. Places to go, men to seduce.” Skye downed the rest of her beer and hopped off of her stool. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” she tossed behind her with a faux-salute and disappeared into the crowd.

Then Jemma was alone with Fitz again, and she was relieved that he looked about as nervous as she felt. It gave her the courage to smile and reach for his hand, lightly pressing her palm against his. “Come on, I have an idea.” They both finished their drinks and she led him across the dance floor again, over to the wall with the best vantage point of the room’s entrances. A couple of moth-eaten loveseats made this area an unspoken “couples” area, and she’d spent more than one evening here with Grant.

Fitz glanced at her warily when she pointed to the smaller, more intimate of the sofas. She leaned in closer than was strictly necessary, and whispered “If we sit here, we can see when Grant comes back, and no one will bother us. It’s the simplest way to look intimate without being so.” He gave the ratty sofa a quick once-over and then nodded. Once he was seated, Jemma sat next to him and swung her legs over his lap, pulling herself flush against him. Fitz hesitated briefly, but then wrapped one arm around her back and rested the other hand on her denim-covered knee. To anyone else, they looked the very picture of coupledom.

A red flush tinged his ears as she traced random shapes and designs along the his neck with her fingers, keeping her lips close to his ear so that it looked like they were having a very intimate conversation indeed. “You’re doing very well, Fitz.”

He flexed the fingers around her knee. “It feels ridiculous that we’re talking and I’m not looking at you.”

“Well, either we keep talking like this, as if I’m telling you a variety of naughty things I’ll be doing to you later this evening –” Fitz swallowed and she couldn’t help but grin. “– Or you turn towards me and we make out. Your choice, Dr. Fitz.”

“Like this, then,” he answered hurriedly, and she chuckled.

“I thought so.” Jemma watched his Adam’s apple shift as he swallowed again and wondered what he was thinking.

“Tell me what you’re working on for your final thesis.”

She leaned back to look properly at him, her smile wide and genuine. “Oh, what a good idea!”

Fitz turned to her, surprised, and tilted his head outwards to the crowded room. “You’re whispering sweet nothings, remember?”

She flushed pink and leaned back in. “Right, sorry. Just got excited –”

“– about science. That’s the Simmons I remember.”

Jemma allowed herself a brief moment to let the sting settle and then leapt in to describing the antiserum theories with which she’d been experimenting, keeping her lips close enough to brush his cheek or the outside of his ear. He’d interrupt with a question or an idea every so often, and aside from the physical intimacy, it felt almost exactly like when they’d spent hours in his room freshman and sophomore year, using each other as sounding boards for their respective disciplines and figuring out how to work through the problems together.

She wasn’t sure how long they sat there like that, curled towards each other like there was no one else at the party, but clearly they’d lost track of their objective because they both jumped when a deep voice interrupted their conversation. 

“What are you doing here?”

Jemma turned her face up to see Grant standing, arms crossed, at the end of the sofa, and practically leapt out of Fitz’s embrace in surprise. She breathed in to her feigned confidence and smiled. “Grant, you startled me,” she laughed, and waved her hand frantically behind her back at Fitz. The sofa creaked as he stood, reaching for her hand and letting her pull him against her, wrapping his arms around her abdomen and leaning his chin on her shoulder. 

The star recruit was wearing one of the shirts Jemma had bought him last Christmas; even though it had only been three days, somehow it feel like she hadn’t seen him in years. He flicked his eyes from Fitz back to Jemma. “Well?”

Jemma narrowed her eyes. “It’s not any of your business where I go anymore.”

Grant narrowed his eyes and glanced back at Fitz, who coolly met the taller man’s gaze.  “I thought he hated you." 

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you thought a lot of things when we were dating.” Jemma twisted her head back to look at Fitz. “I’m finished with this party. Ready to go back to your room?”

Playing the part well, Fitz gave her a slow smile. She ghosted her lips just barely across his, causing him to move after her when she pulled back and threw a dismissive glance in Grant’s direction. “Feel free to have a shitty night, Grant,” she tossed back before navigating a path to the front door with Fitz in tow. As she dodged other partiers, she felt him turn around to look back at Grant and tugged him forward.

Once they were out the front door, Jemma wrapped an arm around Fitz’s waist and he automatically curled his arm around her shoulders. They strode speedily away from the party, but Jemma couldn’t hold her feelings in for longer than it took them to get around the corner. She gulped in a rough sob, and Fitz stopped, startled and more than a little unsure. After watching her cover her face with both hands, he hesitantly reached over and pulled her in for a hug.

“Hey, don’t – don’t cry, that went really well,” he murmured, rubbing soothing circles over her shoulder blades.

Jemma knew it had gone well; she’d seen Grant staring at Fitz holding her in ways that only he had been privileged to last week, watching the engineer’s hands on his ex-girlfriend’s abdomen with more than a little annoyance. If Fitz had asked her what was wrong, she wasn’t sure she had an answer; at least, not one she’d let herself think about. She told herself it was just the tension from the past few days bubbling over now that they’d really set the plan in motion, and stepped back from Fitz, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry Fitz, I think I’m just really tired.” She looked up at him through her ruined makeup and smiled; he nodded back cautiously and offered her his hand. After a deep breath, she took it and continued their walk back to the dormitory. “Well, that’s stage one finished. Now we just have to figure out how to get to Raina,” she mused out loud.

Fitz furrowed his brow and exhaled. “Right.”

They walked hand-in-hand all the way back to the dormitory and Jemma did a fairly good job at not thinking about the way his lips had been drawn almost magnetically towards hers, skimming over each other with the briefest of touches, searching for that extra moment of contact.


	3. It's Gonna Be Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma learns a little more about Fitz's feelings for Raina, and they make a trip to the Boiler Room for stage two of the plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long break! Hopefully the content of this chapter makes up for that somewhat. ;-)

Fitz and Jemma spent the next week and a half acting very much like a new couple, walking each other to class, spending lunchtime holding hands, and alternating whose lab they’d use for work in the afternoons. He even stopped complaining about wearing the nicer clothes, for the most part. Sometimes Jemma would spot Grant down the hall or across the quad and lean closer to Fitz, who was getting much better at not tensing every time she touched him. They had so far managed to avoid actually kissing, but the longer they pretended to date, the less plausible their abstinence from PDAs seemed – based on campus norms, anyway. By this point, Jemma had gotten used to the idea of kissing Fitz (and was, dare she admit it, more than a little curious), but they hadn’t discussed it, so Fitz’s feelings on the subject were an unknown variable.

On Thursday afternoon, they were sitting at a picnic bench on the quad when Fitz’s phone buzzed. He removed his arm from Jemma’s back, where he’d been absently tracing the curve of her shoulder blades and thoroughly distracting her from reading. When he looked up from the phone, a quick succession of emotions flitted across his face before Jemma could read any of them.

“That’s Trip –” Fitz’s good friend, who Jemma suspected didn’t like her very much (judging by their one meeting outside Fitz’s room when he hadn’t said two words to her). “He heard that Raina’s going to be at the Boiler Room tomorrow night with her new boyfriend,” he said, Scottish accent twisting unhappily over that last word.

Jemma squeezed his arm. “Oh _excellent_ , Fitz! Finally – we’ve had no luck with her at all this week.” 

He stared over the edge of his phone. “Yeah, excellent.”

Not sure what to say, Jemma kept her hand on his arm. After a short silence, she decided that now seemed as good a time as any to ask him the questions that had been niggling at her all week. “How long were you seeing each other?”

“Tuesday would’ve been six months,” he answered flatly.

She nodded, rubbing her thumb soothingly over the cotton of his rolled-up sleeve. “I just – I have to ask, but you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I was just wondering what you... well, what brought you together. You don’t seem very similar.”

He glanced over at her. “Sometimes opposites attract, y’know.” 

Jemma chuckled. “Well, obviously. Grant and I are a perfect example of that.”

His lips twisted into what was probably supposed to be a smile. “Of course.” Another few moments passed. “Raina – well, we’re more similar than we seem, I s’pose. She introduced herself at the Boiler Room, and she was so unusual, and charming. And completely against the Academy’s whole bloody social hierarchy, which, well…” Fitz trailed off, looking askance at Jemma before continuing. “I pretty much hated all of that, so she just sort of pressed the right buttons.” Jemma _mmm_ ’ed in understanding, trying not to think about how Fitz was basically saying that he’d fallen for Raina because she was everything Jemma wasn’t. “She always wanted me to tell her what I was working on, too, which isn’t that usual outside of the department.”

They both chuckled; that was something they could certainly agree on. Even Jemma’s advisor’s eyes tended to glaze over when she spent too long rambling about her work.

“She always said she believed in me,” he added, quietly, staring down at his hands. “That she thought I could be more than just the sum of the Academy’s parts. I guess it sounds kind of stupid, but it’s... really nice to be around someone who believes in you so completely.”

Jemma’s stomach gave a small lurch at the sadness featured plainly on his face, and she had to forcibly push aside the part of her that wanted to reply, ‘ _I believe in you – I always have_.’ Out of nowhere, she felt this surge of protectiveness and an almost-aggressive need to get Fitz everything he ever wanted.

She grabbed his hand and hugged it to her, making eye contact. “We’re going to do this, Fitz. I’m going to help you get her back.”

He opened his mouth to reply but stalled, staring back at the determination in her eyes, and gave her a soft smile. “Thanks, Simmons.”

She grinned back and nudged his shoulder. “Jemma.” 

“Right,” he said, and then pulled her hand to him, pressing his lips gently against her knuckles. Before she could follow his gaze over her shoulder, he spoke: “Don’t. Ward’s behind you.”

Jemma made a small “ _oh_ ” but couldn’t remember what she was going to say because Fitz was continuing to press gentle kisses against her skin and she couldn’t quantify the fire left by his lips. He shifted his gaze to her and she stared back, his eyes almost green in the reflection from the grass and dark in a way that was unfamiliar and very, very intriguing. The man sitting in front of her wasn’t the nervous, awkward boy she’d met four years ago, and Jemma wasn’t sure if she was drawn to him or missed the way he’d been back then. At least she’d understood that awkwardness.

“He’s gone,” Fitz said, unceremoniously dropping her hand. 

She laughed nervously and straightened her cardigan. “You’re getting much better at this, Fitz.”

“Always been a fast learner,” he quipped. “And, well, knowing it’s not real helps. Takes off that pressure.”

“Of course. That makes sense.” Jemma smiled and turned back to her work, trying to ignore that sudden flare of disappointment. 

 

\------

 

The Boiler Room was quite different from the recruit house – less frat and more bar. It also tended to attract more scientists than any of the other campus party spots, even having a small section dedicated to Pawn Pong. As they passed the group of people gathered around a chessboard and piles of plastic shot glasses, Jemma nervously straightened her blouse, holding tightly onto Fitz’s hand. She hadn’t been here in quite some time.

“Remember, Fitz, you’re in charge tonight,” she whisper-shouted into his ear.

He turned to her and stopped in the middle of the path to the bar. “You don’t have a plan?” 

Jemma gave him an incredulous look. “She’s _your_ girlfriend! Ex-girlfriend. Oh, you know what I mean.” Fitz stared blankly back at her. “You really don’t have anything planned?”

He groaned, and scratched the back of his head, continuing on to the bar. “We’ll just have to play it by ear, I guess.”

Jemma stared after him and shook her head before speeding up alongside him. “Because _that_ ’s never been a problem for us.”

He turned to her, insulted. “Are you talking about –”

“The fiasco that was our presentation for Dr Leekie’s surprise mid-term?”

“It wasn’t a fiasco –”

“You set the projector on fire.”

“Only a very small one.” 

“And I somehow ended up stuck to the smart board.”

“If you hadn’t been distracted during the mid-term set-up –”

“I wouldn’t have been distracted if you hadn’t been –” Jemma caught herself before she finished with ‘ _sitting so close to me_.’

Fitz was looking at her, waiting for the rest of the sentence, so she just chuckled and waved her hand. “Let’s just hope there are fewer combustible chemicals in the Boiler Room.”

He gave the room a quick glance and smirked. “That’s it, we’re done for.”

“Might as well have a drink first then,” she added, slid onto a stool, and signaled to the bartender.

“Good idea. Who needs plans when you’ve got alcohol?” He grinned down at her and she ignored the slight flutter in the pit of her stomach. Once they’d ordered their drinks, Jemma grabbed onto Fitz’s shirt and pulled him forward so that he was standing in between her thighs. He gave a low, nervous giggle and ran his hand through his hair, the other one coming to rest on her shoulder.

She picked at one of the buttons on his shirt and smiled. “Come on, Fitz. We’re barely even touching.”

Fitz exhaled. “I know, I’m just – Raina was never quite this... touchy. In public.”

As their drinks arrived, a lanky, dark-skinned man with impeccable facial hair snuck up behind Fitz and sprung one of his curls, then slid around behind Fitz as he looked for his tormentor and pulled a curl on the other side of his head. The second time, Fitz caught Trip in the act, and punched the taller man in the shoulder. Luckily for Fitz, Trip was laughing too hard to retaliate.

“Wanker,” Fitz muttered into his beer.

“So how’s the scheming going tonight?” Trip was already holding a pint, which he raised to his lips. Fitz had enlisted his friend’s help a few days ago when neither he nor Jemma had any luck with running into Raina on campus. Although Fitz didn’t explain their conversation in detail, Jemma assumed that Trip hadn’t liked the plan, which wasn’t especially surprising. Trip was a spec-ops recruit, and a well-respected one at that, yet he eschewed any “normal” recruit behavior, preferring to spend his time with the sci- and comm-ops instead. Jemma vividly remembered one night when Vic spent twenty minutes lambasting him for rejecting her invitation to a cocktail party (although she assumed that Vic was mostly annoyed that he’d rejected _her_ as opposed to the invitation).

“We just got here,” Fitz answered over his glass.

“Any sight of Raina?” Jemma piped up, earning her a flat glance from Trip. 

He opened his mouth to reply but stopped, eyes widening as he looked over Fitz’s shoulder. “Speak the name…” he muttered.

“Hello.” Her voice was smooth and carried a hint of deceptive lightness that reminded Jemma of the syrup lining the edges of _dionaea muscipula_. 

All of the muscles in Fitz tensed when he heard her voice, and he turned slowly, keeping a hand (gripping a little too tightly) on Jemma’s shoulder. “Raina. Hi.”

She slid her eyes from Fitz to the hand on Jemma’s shoulder, over to Trip, and then back to her former boyfriend. “Can I speak to you, please? Alone?" 

Trying mostly successfully not to seem phased, Fitz shrugged and leaned down to press a quick kiss to Jemma’s forehead. “I’ll be right back.” She didn’t miss the slight tremble in his hand as he removed it from her and followed Raina through the crowd. The two of them disappeared from Jemma’s view at the bar, and she frowned.

Glancing up at Trip, she grabbed her and Fitz’s glasses and gestured to a high table in front of a large cement column, on the side of the room with a clearer view of Raina and Fitz. When she reached the table, she turned to see that he hadn’t followed her. Trip gave a long look towards where his friend was standing and inhaled before joining Jemma at the table.

“Look, I can’t stay, but… I just wanted to say something to you. Without Fitz.” His tone was serious, in stark contrast to the congenial teaser who had joined them at the bar.

Jemma smiled, trying to hide her sudden and probably-irrational nervousness. “Go ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “Fitz has told me a lot about what happened junior year. And, you seem nice enough, but – just try not to screw him over, okay? You messed him up enough last time.” 

Trip kept eye contact but Jemma had to break it, staring down at the multicolored reflections on the surface of the table, willing herself not to get either upset or angry. She glanced back up at him after a moment and nodded, lips pressed tightly together. 

Relieved, he nodded back. “Okay. Good. I’ll, uh – see you around.” Trip left his glass on the table and navigated quickly through the crowd. 

Jemma sipped at her whiskey sour and wondered if she should have defended herself. Wondered whether or not it mattered that Fitz had forced an impossible choice onto her – career and popularity versus friendship. After that fight, she’d avoided him just as much as he’d avoided her, and in the end it probably didn’t matter that her choices had started the whole damn mess: It takes two to tango, after all, and neither she nor Fitz had ever been very good at dealing with the consequences of emotion.

After a few moments of flitting between frustration and self-pity, Jemma realized that Fitz was returning to her from across the dance floor – and his expression didn’t seem to suggest anything good.

“What happened?” She put her glass down on the table, noticing a slight shake in the hand Fitz was using to rub his neck.

He exhaled and glanced back at where Raina was standing, her hand pressed against the arm of a broad-chested man in a camo-green shirt. The girl in the flower dress was smirking as she spoke, and by the way she kept glancing over at them, Jemma suspected that whatever she was saying was about Fitz. 

“She just asked – I don’t think she believes it. That we’re dating. She said something about how you used to date Ward and laughed.” He was trying to shrug it off, but Jemma’s heart broke a little at the way his whole body had slouched in defeat.

She pursed her lips and glared back at Raina, real anger flaring in her chest, and almost growled. “She doesn’t _believe_ we’re dating, does she?”

Fitz turned to Jemma, worried by her tone, but before he could say anything else she grabbed him and pressed her lips firmly to his, dragging him flush against her. He made a small noise of surprise against her lips as they bumped into the column behind her, but Jemma just licked over his bottom lip and into his mouth, the sweetness of her cocktail mixing with the sharpness of his beer. She scraped her teeth lightly against his lower lip and he moaned into her mouth, his hands reflexively grabbing onto her hips as she slid her palm up around the back of his neck and up through his hair, twisting her fingers into the curls. Part of her was wondering why they’d never done this before, even while the rest of her tried to remember that this was all a show, and she silently gave thanks to whoever had taught Fitz to kiss. He was matching her move for move, heated breath for breath, leaving her dizzy and glad for the support of the column.

Jemma broke away, just enough to breathe deeply, and looked properly at Fitz. Eyes hooded and unfocused, he stared down at her lips, his tongue darting out to wet his own. Desire shot straight through her, and she had to take an extra gulp of air before she spoke. “Kiss my neck,” she whispered, his face still close enough for their breath to mingle, heated and intimate. He made a peculiar sort of groan in the back of his throat that may have been an answer, but he also didn’t move. “Fitz,” she said, trying to remember what she’d been doing when she pulled away from his lips. “I need to see if she’s watching.” His eyes snapped up to hers at last, and she repeated: “Kiss my neck.”

Fitz blinked, once, twice, and then obeyed, pressing slow, feather-light kisses against her jaw and around to the sensitive skin just below her ear. When his tongue darted out to tease gently at her earlobe, Jemma bit her lip and let her eyes roll up, for just a moment, before taking a breath and looking over to where Raina was still standing. Much to Jemma’s smug pleasure, the girl in the flower dress was watching them with a mix of surprise, disgust, and, hopefully, jealousy. After another moment, Raina turned around, pulling her beefy new beau through the crowd.

Jemma knew she should stop Fitz, but the longer he spent pressing the warmth of his lips and tongue against her skin, the hazier her thoughts were getting. She gave up resisting ( _for just another few seconds,_ she promised herself) and dragged his face back to hers, sliding her lips against his and delighting in the possessive moan this elicited from Fitz. Her hands moved of their own accord down his spine to rest against his lower back, feeling his muscles tense and release as his arms pulled her hips against his. That closeness brought with it a new, coiled heat, and was what finally woke Jemma out of her daze. As she pulled away, pretending to look over his shoulder, one of his hands flexed around her hip, causing her to stifle a gasp and force herself to concentrate much more intently on her current task.

“She’s gone,” Jemma breathed, gently pushing Fitz back to give them both some recovery space. He moved one of his hands away from her, leaving her skin feeling suddenly cold, and supported himself against the column. She watched the fog slowly disappear from his eyes and couldn’t help but smile.

Finally, he seemed to remember where they were, and he met her gaze. “Oh. Right.” There was another pause as their pulses returned to normal and the noise of the bar seemed to rise around them. 

“Well done, Fitz,” Jemma said, patting him on the arm and sliding over to pick up her drink. She cringed internally, berating herself for sounding like she was congratulating him on the success of a new invention.

His eyes followed her and he raised an eyebrow but chose not to comment on her word choice. “She saw?”

“The whole thing.”

“What did she...”

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Jemma mused, grinning, “but she certainly didn’t look happy when she left the room.” 

After taking a long gulp from his beer, Fitz gave her a small smile. “Good. Stage two was a success.” He glanced quickly around the crowded bar and back to her. “So... what do we do now?”

Jemma downed the last of her drink and leaned against the table. “Well, I’ve been wondering... we’re both somewhat different now from a year ago, wouldn’t you agree?” He nodded, slightly puzzled. “I’m just curious to see if you’re still absolutely rubbish at chess.”

Fitz made an indignant noise and crossed his arms. “I was _never_ rubbish at chess!”

“You were whenever you played me.” She smirked, twisting the small red straws in her fingers.

“Alright then, we’ll just have to test this ludicrous hypothesis for ourselves.” He used the table to lift himself up slightly over the nearby crowd. “There’s an open board over there, come on. Loser buys the next round.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the crowd between them and the Pawn Pong tables.

Jemma smiled again, feeling like a shameless flirt but also not quite able to stop herself. “I hope you brought enough money, Fitz, because I’m ordering a double half-century Macallan.” 

He snorted. “You don’t even _like_ Scotch.” 

“But it’ll taste so much better when you’ve paid for it.”

He stopped so suddenly that she bumped into him, and she released an indignant noise. Chest-to-chest, practically nose-to-nose, Fitz glared at her, eyes crinkling in mirth and that competitive spirit they shared. “Game on, Watson.”

Jemma snorted. “We’ll see who’s Watson in the end,” she said, setting up the table’s chess pieces.

Later that night, she’d lie on her sheets still fully clothed and wonder if Fitz’s reaction to their kiss was purely physiological or something more, if he was lying on the other side of their shared wall right now and thinking the same thoughts or missing the touch of her skin. But for the moment, Jemma had almost forgotten about the scheme and her career, and was laughing about chess and drinks and strategy with the man who used to be her best friend in the world.


	4. Why Can't I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jemma learns that people are a lot more complicated than science.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to astrotimbre for giving the science bits a quick edit!
> 
> Also, a quick note: Garrett is ~28 years old, compared to most of the others' ~22 years.

Four days after the night at the Boiler Room, Jemma was almost surprised to learn that there was actually something else that could go as disastrously wrong as Grant breaking up with her before the most important night of her entire life.

“No, no, _no_ , David, you cannot do this to me! I have just over two weeks to get this bloody thing working – what did you just call me? No, wait, don’t –” The dial tone clicked, and Jemma let out a frustrated groan, dropping her face into her hands.

Skye, who had been clicking peacefully away on her laptop, glanced out the wall-length windows to the common area and then slid her eyes over to Jemma. This was one of the most unfortunate aspects of SHIELD’s best lab facilities: Everything was visible to everyone else.

“That sounded good.”

Jemma didn’t answer, breathing slowly and taking comfort in the familiar weight of her lab coat. The door’s slight squeak indicated Fitz’s arrival from class; today it was his turn to accompany her during lab hours. She looked up and was greeted with a gentle kiss, and then he glanced behind her through the windows. For the split second his lips were pressed to hers, warm and new and _his_ , she felt a wash of calm – before being reminded that it was for show and nothing else.

He noticed something was wrong as soon as he looked at her, and dropped his bookbag to the floor. “What happened?”

“Someone named David did something to make her _swear_ ,” Skye piped up. 

Jemma crossed her arms and glared at her friend. “I was under the impression that Americans thought all Brits using ‘bloody’ every other word was cute.”

“Oh, we do,” Skye answered, leaning forward. “But I think I’ve only ever heard _you_ use it once before, so, spill.”

Jemma sighed and slumped onto one of the stools before turning to Fitz, since Skye knew some of this. “I was asked to organize the design of a display at the gala, to represent interdisciplinary unity.” Fitz scoffed quietly and she shot him a look. “The structure itself has already been built, and I completed my tests of the chemical reagents ages ago–”

“Chemical reagents?”

“To make the pretty lights go boom,” Skye explained. Both scientists gave her a withering look, and she raised her hands in defense. “What?”

Jemma turned back to Fitz. “The problem is that the engineering student who was developing the dispersal mechanism is a complete imbecile, and he just quit the project. Now I have the chemical components, a ludicrously large structure, and no way to actually produce the designed light show.”

“He did seem sort of like a douche,” Skye added, turning back to her laptop. “And his obsession with bananas was just downright weird.”

“Can I see his designs?”

Jemma dug around in her bag and pulled out a manila folder filled with crinkled papers. “Here are the basic designs he gave me last week. The rest would be in his lab.”

Fitz took the folder and flipped through a few pages, brows furrowed as his eyes skimmed from one image to the next. After releasing a small grunt (of approval or disapproval, Jemma couldn’t tell), he grabbed a pen off the table, pulled the cap off with his teeth, and started scribbling on the designs.

A few moments later, Fitz looked up, cap still in between his lips. “I can fix this, no problem.” 

Skye chuckled. “Says the rocket scientist.” 

He sighed in exasperation, and raised his eyes up to the ceiling. “Actually, what I do is far more difficult than being a rocket scientist –”

“Can you really fix it, Fitz?” Jemma interrupted, staving off a long rant about how rocket science is not actually the epitome of scientific achievement that the rest of the world seemed to think it was.

“Yeah, no problem. I have to take a look at the complete specs, but I might be able to have it working in two hours.” He scratched his head. “Or a couple days, if he really bolloxed it. But still, piece of cake.” 

Elated, Jemma ran at him and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh _thank_ you! You’re a life-saver, Fitz!”

He stumbled back a step at the force of her hug but quickly wrapped his arms around her in turn, pressing his cheek against the side of her head. “Isn’t that what pretend boyfriends are supposed to do?”

Jemma choked out an uneven laugh. Skye raised an eyebrow at her friend over Fitz’s shoulder, and Jemma glared back before stepping away from Fitz faster than was strictly necessary. “We can go to his lab now, I have access. Is that okay?”

He shrugged and picked his bag off the floor. “Yeah, I was only gonna get some reading done today, anyway.”

“Brushing up on how to build a quantum flux capacitor, huh?” Skye said, standing and grabbing her own bag. Fitz grimaced and opened his mouth, probably to tell her how quantum flux capacitors don’t actually exist, but she spoke over him. “Jemma, can I talk to you for a sec? Quick party etiquette question.”

Getting the distinct impression that she was going to regret saying yes, Jemma nodded. “I’ll be out in a minute, Fitz.” He glanced between the two women but took the hint and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

Skye looked at him through the glass and then gazed piercingly at Jemma. “I’m pretty sure you won’t listen to me, so I’m just gonna say this. If things are changing, you should consider _letting_ them change.”

Jemma stared back at her friend, completely befuddled. “You’re being unusually cryptic, Skye.”

“That’s ‘cause usually I’m _en_ cryptic.” She made a drumroll sound and hit an invisible cymbal. “And who said programmers can’t be funny? – Look, just think about it, okay?”

Jemma turned and grabbed her bag. “If I figure out what you mean, I promise I’ll give it some serious consideration,” she replied drily, before stepping into the hallway.

Skye turned in the opposite direction of where they were heading and gave Jemma a quick wave goodbye.

“Everything okay?”

Jemma jumped a little at the closeness of Fitz’s voice, then smiled. “Yes, everything’s fine.”

He nodded and reached for her hand. As Jemma entwined her fingers with his and they set off towards the other lab, she wondered when this had started to feel so natural.

 

\------

 

Jemma sped out of the lab building’s door, trying not to actually bounce on her feet while she waited for Fitz to catch up. He stepped out of the building half a second behind her, still pulling on his cardigan; once it was on, she threaded her arm through his and they set off across the quad.

“That was _absolutely_ brilliant, Fitz! I can’t believe it’s almost working.”

He shrugged, shifting her arm against the wool of his sweater. “ _Almost_ working – I still have to get it functioning full scale –”

Jemma stopped mid-stride and turned to him, grabbing onto his shoulders in excitement. “But you got it to actually deliver the light show for once! David hadn’t been able to do that at all! I’d almost forgotten what a proper genius you are, Fitz.” She smiled warmly at him, and he just ducked his head, staring down at his trainers.

“It was an easy fix, really. Only an idiot would forget to bias an op amp –”

She laughed, too giddy by half. “Good thing you’re not an idiot, then.”

He raised his eyes to return her gaze, finally allowing himself a small grin. Jemma stared at the shifting colors in his eyes, lapis-blue today from the late-afternoon sky, and realized how close they were standing. She sucked in a quick breath and looked behind him: No potential audience on that part of the campus, which probably meant that they should separate. 

“Looks like a spec-ops seminar just let out behind you,” Fitz murmured, his voice husky, somehow reading her thoughts. This kind of mutual understanding had once been so commonplace in their conversations that its quick resurgence was almost jarring.

Jemma turned back to him, feeling her palms warm up against his shoulders, and glanced down at his lips. “Oh.” 

He slid his hands over her waist and around to her lower back, pressing firmly through her shirt and sweater, and leaned almost imperceptibly closer. “We should probably…”

“Yes, I think so,” Jemma whispered, breath hitching as he ghosted his lips across hers. Fitz pressed light kisses to the side of her mouth, up around her lower jaw, and she tried not to sigh. This had been one of the better side effects of their Friday night at the Boiler Room. Something had been broached that night, and Fitz had become far more willing to participate in the charade. Where he once had only accepted her initiated hand holding and public cuddling, now he was pointing out Vic’s, Grant’s, or Raina’s respective presences throughout the day.

Finally, he moved his lips firmly over hers, angling his head to press her mouth gently open and slide his tongue across hers, the newly familiar taste of him making her head fuzzy. He pulled his lips away a moment later, causing Jemma to emit a small whimper and then want to kick herself. People just pretending to be in a relationship really shouldn’t be – but she forgot her annoyance as he pressed more kisses along her throat. 

Someone nearby scoffed, and Fitz raised his head as Jemma turned. Vic was standing behind them, an eyebrow raised and disgust plainly written on her face. “Get a room,” she snapped, and brushed past Jemma. But Jemma didn’t turn to retaliate because when Vic had moved she’d revealed that Grant was standing only a few meters away, his mouth twisted to the side and hands uncharacteristically shoved into his jeans pockets. Jemma pursed her lips and turned to Fitz, but his attention was now focused somewhere over her right shoulder. She twisted around to see that Raina was standing a few meters in the other direction, in the direction of the comm-ops building. The girl in the flower dress tilted her head to the side, indicating that Fitz should join her.

He exhaled slowly, and turned back to Jemma. They shared a nervous glance, and then Fitz spoke. “Meet after?”

She nodded and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. As she strode over to Grant, pulling her sweater tight around her waist, he gave her an uncomfortable smile. 

“Hi.”

“Can I help you with something?”

There was a long pause where he studied her face, and then he chuckled to himself. “I used to tell you everything, I don’t know why this feels so weird.”

“Probably because you broke up with me over two weeks ago,” she retorted and then noticed the severe bags under his eyes. Without thinking, she reached up to run her thumb over the edge of one. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Not sleeping well, I guess,” he answered, and then brought one hand up to cover the one Jemma had left on his cheek. 

She jerked back, remembering that she’s supposed to be angry with him and that her new “boyfriend” was standing just behind them. “Well…?”

Grant folded his hands behind his back in a pseudo-military pose that he reverted to when he was nervous. “I just wanted to say sorry. About the way I acted at the recruit house right after we...” He sighed. “I was an ass. You didn’t deserve that.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.” Jemma crossed her arms and tried not to think about how different Grant was from the man she’d been spending all her time with during the past couple weeks. She couldn’t imagine finishing any of Grant’s sentences or knowing what he thought without needing to ask. At one time she’d liked that unpredictability, but now it felt frustrating. 

He broke her eye contact and glanced behind her. “So how’re things going with the engineer?”

Jemma turned to where Fitz stood and frowned as Raina handed him a piece of paper and then took one of his hands in hers.

Shaking her head clear, Jemma looked back at Grant. “That is absolutely none of your business.”

He raised his hands in acquiescence. “You’re right, you’re right.” Another awkward silence descended, and Jemma felt something niggling at the back of her brain, as if she was forgetting something she was supposed to be feeling. “Are you still going to try for field ops after graduation?”

She raised her chin, bristling at the implication that she would just _give up_ because something would be more difficult than she’d originally thought. “I belong in the field.”

Grant laughed warmly and loosely crossed his arms. “Yeah – yeah, you do.”

A broad-chested man strode up behind Grant and clapped him on the back. “Good work today, recruit.”

Grant shook the man’s hand, and Jemma realized she recognized him as Raina’s new boyfriend, the man she’d been whispering to in the Boiler Room. “Thank you, Agent Garrett,” Grant replied, glancing uncomfortably in Jemma’s direction.

“Don’t forget about the honors shindig on Saturday – after party at my place,” he said, winking at Jemma. She raised an eyebrow but he was already striding buoyantly towards his girlfriend.

Grant was looking at Jemma and quirked his mouth up in a small smile when she turned back to him. “You going to that?” 

“The after party?” She retorted drily.

He chuckled. “The inter-ops honors cocktail reception. Will I see you there?”

“Fitz and I will be there.”

Grant set his jaw and nodded. “Right.” He opened his mouth and closed it again, wanting to say something but clearly deterred by her icy exterior. “Okay, I’ll – see you around, Jemma.” When she didn’t answer, he turned around, paused, and then turned back. “I’ve missed you. A lot.”

Before she could respond in any way, he strode off across the quad. Jemma’s satisfaction that her plan was working was tinged with a strange sourness that she couldn’t quite place. The idea of running after him flitted through her mind, and she told herself that missing someone wasn’t the same as wanting to get back together, so she’d be better off waiting a little longer. The smell of his body wash, something musky with cinnamon, wafted back towards where she was standing, and she was thrown into the memories of a hundred mornings where he’d kissed her awake, or brought her tea in bed, or simply lain there, holding her. For a long time, she’d felt so comfortable in those arms, but now he seemed foreign to her, and she couldn’t quite reconcile the disparate feelings.

“Hey,” Fitz said from behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She started at being pulled out of her reverie and chuckled. “You keep doing that today.”

He raised an eyebrow. “S’ not my fault you’re feeling jumpy.” She rolled her eyes and he grinned. “So, how’d that go?” 

Jemma sighed and smiled. “It’s working.”

He nodded. “Me, too. I think so, anyway – it’s kind of hard to tell with Raina,” he chuckled. “She’s always had that ‘feminine mystique’ kind of... thing.” Fitz peered into Jemma’s eyes. “You don’t seem as happy as I thought you’d be, your scheme working and all.”

She wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or not that he had seen through her fake smile so easily yet again and settled for a genuine grimace. “I may have said we would be attending a cocktail party on Saturday.”

As Jemma hooked her arm through his and pulled him along the path, he groaned, rolling his head up to the sky. “Jemma...” 

“I know, I’m sorry – I was going to skip it, but now that I’ve told Grant we have to at least make an appearance.” He dropped his head back down and stared at her, mouth open. “What?”

“You... were going to voluntarily miss a networking opportunity?”

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t start, Fitz, please.” He’d been so good, recently, about not making unsubtle comments about her career ambitions – Jemma assumed that speaking to Raina, the anti-establishment queen, had brought his feelings about this to the surface. 

“No, really, I’m just genuinely surprised,” he said quickly. “A week ago you dragged me all the way across campus for a twenty-minute chance to talk to a former science field op, who had actually left the luncheon before we even got there.”

Jemma smiled and shrugged. “I thought we could work on perfecting the display’s dispersal mechanism without any interruptions, since no one would be in the lab on a Saturday night.” She could feel his eyes on her face, but refused to look at him, feeling a slight blush creep up the back of her neck. “It doesn’t matter, though, we might even be done with it by that point.”

A brief quiet fell over them, and Jemma purposely didn’t turn to see the expression on Fitz’s face; she didn’t want him to be able to read her again.

“So, a cocktail party, then,” he said, breaking the silence. 

Jemma pulled a face and hugged his arm a little closer to her, wanting the benefit of his warmth in the unusually cool late-afternoon air. “It’s an honors reception organized by the deans. It could actually be very useful... what?” She’d noticed he’d flinched, and turned to see him avoiding her eyes.

“No, nothing.”

“You made a face at ‘deans,’ I saw that. Tell me,” she said, and playfully poked at his side.

Fitz jerked away from her finger and swatted gently back at her. “I just... I haven’t seen Dean May since the... you heard about –”

“Since you saved her life?” 

“Yeah, that.”

Jemma gave him a bemused smile. “Maybe I’m missing something, Fitz, but usually people are proud of saving someone else’s life.” He flicked his eyes towards her and away again, and she stopped, planting her feet in the grass of the quad. “Okay, you’re clearly not telling me something. What’s going on in that head of yours?” She gently tapped the curls on the side of his head.

Fitz sighed and stared down at his trainers, hands finding their ways into his pockets. “It was my fault,” he whispered, so low Jemma couldn’t quite hear him. She gave him a small nudge, and he spoke up but still low, as if he was afraid someone else would hear them on the nearly-empty quad. “It was my fault the pool’s surface froze. I was pranking someone else, I didn’t realize May would be in there.”

Jemma’s hands flew to her mouth and she gaped at him. “Oh my God, Fitz, you almost killed a _dean_!”

He covered his face with his hands. “It was only the surface of the pool, not all the water – just, please don’t talk about it – I’ve never been more ashamed of myself. I had nightmares for days afterwards about not getting to her in time.” There was another silence as Jemma tried to find something empathetic to say, but before she could stop herself she was giggling, trying to stop the laugh by gripping onto her mouth with both hands. Fitz removed his hands from his face and gaped at her. “It’s not funny, Jemma!” 

She took deep breaths to slow the laughter, but had to talk through them. “I’m sorry, but it _is_! Only you would end up accidentally pranking one of the most important people in all of SHIELD and then end up getting accolades for saving her – from yourself!”

The giggles returned and she had to lean on his shoulder to support herself. Fitz made a chagrined huff and elbowed her in the side, and she finally was able to calm herself down. After another moment, she grabbed hold of his arm again and they returned to their amble through the quad.

“So, who were you trying to prank?” 

“Ah.” His ears flushed pink under her gaze. “No one specific, just... general pranking.” 

Jemma took a moment to read the avoidance on his face, and then raised an eyebrow. “Fitz. Who were you trying to prank?”

He turned back to her and swallowed. “I – okay. Promise not to be angry.”

“Alright, no anger,” she answered quickly, without giving the request much thought.

Fitz raised a hand to scratch through his hair and sighed. “I was aiming for Ward.”

“Oh.”

A myriad of emotions passed through Jemma’s thoughts almost faster than she could process them, landing finally on wondering why – more than a year after they’d stopped speaking – Fitz had decided to prank her then-boyfriend.

“I’d seen him go in there at the same time a couple days in a row and I just...” He studied her face, panic creeping into his voice. “Hey, you promised you wouldn’t be angry. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear.”

She got the sense that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth by that, but the concern on his face softened her consternation. Jemma glanced down and chuckled. “I can just see the look on his face if he’d had to be rescued from someone from sci-ops.”

Fitz laughed a little too readily, plainly relieved. “Oh, the humiliation.”

“After all, he’s star-recruit Grant Ward, he can take on half the training team with one hand tied behind his back.” They both laughed, leaning on each other’s shoulders as they walked up the steps to the dormitory. Jemma slowed her giggles first this time, stopped by the thought that she was making fun of the man that she’s supposed to be trying to get back together with. She bit her lip. “He’s not so bad you know,” she added softly, compelled to defend him. “Once you get to know him. He’s just very driven.” 

Fitz pulled the door open for her. “Like you.”

There was no malice in his voice this time, but Jemma flinched anyway. “Like... me.” 

They walked the last few meters to their doors in silence that wasn’t quite uncomfortable, but also not agreeable. He turned to her at his door, fidgeting with his keys. “So, this cocktail party. Anything new I need to know?”

Jemma nodded thoughtfully. “Good point, Fitz. We should probably spend some time talking about it tomorrow. After lab hours?”

“After lab hours it is.” He grinned, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“See you tomorrow then,” she replied, unlocking her door. 

“Yeah.”

Jemma saw him watching her until she gently closed the door, and then stared at the handle, supremely frustrated with herself. Something about this entire afternoon had her feeling distinctly discombobulated, and she couldn’t figure out if it was Fitz or Grant that had her stomach tied in knots. It should be Grant, yet she couldn’t get the feeling of Fitz’s lips out of her head. The worst part about relationships is that there aren’t any samples to take or tests to run to figure out where the problem lies. She was supposed to just know, and right now her own feelings were annoyingly out of reach.

 

\------

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Fitz,” Jemma said cheerfully, holding the hem of her pastel-green dress off the ground as they strolled back to their dorm. “No one possibly noticed that you mixed up the proportions of the chemical components for the gala display.” 

Fitz shook his head ruefully and kicked at a pebble with his black dress shoes. “It was a stupid mistake – I knew I shouldn’t have had that second champagne.”

Jemma pulled her hem up a little higher as she climbed up the dormitory steps and rolled her eyes. “You can blame the champagne, but I’m fairly certain that’s not what had you flustered.”

The flush on Fitz’s cheeks was apparent as he entered the beam of light from the lobby windows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled. Jemma was wearing a slinky silk cocktail dress, and from the moment Fitz had laid eyes on her he’d been unable to function unless she was at least a foot away from him. At one point – during the conversation in question – she’d curved her arm gently through his, the silk sliding gently against his hand, and he’d completely lost the thread of conversation.

For his part, Fitz looked exceptionally handsome (in Jemma’s objective opinion) in the one suit he owned. They’d gone shopping for it last week, in preparation for the gala, and it had luckily been ready to wear for the cocktail party. She’d helped him tame his curls just so, and in the dark suit he cut quite a dashing figure, trim and somehow taller than he normally seemed.

As she waited for him to reach her at the main entrance, she leaned against the open door and took off her heels. They were short – just over an inch high – but the straps were digging painfully into her toes. When Fitz reached her, she gave him a sardonic smile, and he just shook his head as he entered the building.

She padded after him in bare feet, shoes swinging from her left hand, and laughed quietly. “Honestly, Fitz, you did _so_ well tonight! You’d never know that before two weeks ago you’d never been to a formal cocktail reception.” 

Fitz glanced back at her. “Really?”

They’d reached their doors by then, and Jemma placed her right hand against his chest. He looked straight at her, his eyes a lighter blue in the reflection of her pastel dress, and she smiled. “I swear, Fitz. You were excellent.” Without thinking, she leaned forward and pressed her lips gently against his, letting her shoes drop to the floor so she could bring her hand around to the back of his head. She slowly deepened the kiss, pressing closer to him, smoothing her fingers in the curls at the nape of his neck.

Fitz slid one hand onto her hip and tenderly pushed back, moving his lips off of hers. Jemma opened her eyes, smiling but puzzled.

“Jemma,” he whispered against her lips, staring searchingly into her eyes, so very close to his. “There’s no one here.”

Jemma’s stomach clenched and her every muscle froze, because, of course, Fitz was right. She had kissed him in a completely deserted hallway, and there was no reason for her to have done so. None other than that she’d wanted to.

“Oh,” she breathed, heart beating so frantically that she was sure he could feel it through her dress. “Right, sorry, Fitz. Wasn’t paying attention.” Fitz frowned and opened his mouth, but Jemma pulled away and stumbled over to her door, reaching quickly for her fallen shoes. “I’ll see you tomorrow – have a good night’s sleep, we’ve still got a lot of work to do on the display.” And then she was on the other side of her own door, in the silence of her room and away from Fitz’s eyes, which she could still feel burning through her skin. 

Jemma curled over on herself, leaning on the door, and covered her face with her hands. _What is wrong with me?_ She stood up sharply, took a deep, shaky breath, and then strode over to her desk to retrieve a large, ratty book from the bottom drawer.

Still in her dress, Jemma sat on the floor cross-legged, hitching the hem up around her knees, and opened her first chemistry textbook to chapter six, her favorite. It described the first law of thermodynamics, how no energy in the universe is created and none is destroyed, and she’d read it so many times by this point that she had it memorized. Her father had let her buy the textbook when she was seven and quite uninterested in any of the other children’s books, and she always re-read it when she’d reached a problem to which she could see no solution.

Jemma repeated the words to herself, over and over again, until she fell asleep on the floor in her party dress and dreamed about the impending gala and the engineer she wasn’t supposed to love.


	5. The Right Kind of Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude, and then the beginning of the gala. Some things go according to plan, and others most decidedly do not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who saw my note that this was only going to be five main chapters... er, sorry about that. You've got another full chapter coming this weekend, and then the epilogue. So don't panic - this isn't the ending!

During the following week, Jemma worked at convincing herself that kissing Fitz after the cocktail party was just a reaction to having missed his friendship so much. They’d lost so much in that year, and it was completely understandable that certain feelings would resurface. When they met for lunch the next day, neither of them mentioned it, instead discussing the success of Fitz’s modifications to the dispersal mechanism and continuing to act like the affectionate couple the rest of campus thought they were.

The week before the gala soared by. Fitz fixed and improved the light show, and they tested it successfully half a dozen times before the middle of the week. Jemma’s work on her final thesis was at the editing stage, and every time they saw Grant or Raina, both of them looked increasingly downtrodden and disconcerted. 

The morning of the gala, Fitz and Jemma were lying on the quad and getting some end-of-year reading done. The tree shading them had wide limbs, the leaves filtering shadows over Jemma’s face. Fitz was lying back against the trunk, and Jemma’s head was resting against his chest as she lay perpendicular to him. Raina had passed by them a few minutes ago, so their hands were entwined in front of Jemma.

Having already discarded the book she was supposed to be reading, she absently loosened her fingers from Fitz’s but kept their palms close together, ghosting her fingers along and around his. He kept his hand still but his fingers were responsive, following where hers moved, and she thought about how she’d spent much of the early week watching him work with his hands, pulling, prodding at uncooperative pieces and putting broken things together again. They were calloused but nimble, and always warmer than hers.

She remembered all those years ago when she’d been fascinated by the way he used his hands, marveling at the inventions he could create with just his fingers and a few tools. Although he certainly wasn’t any less impressive now, it was less surprising; of _course_ he could make almost anything work – that’s just who Fitz was.

Jemma was telling him about how she’d decided on what to create for the display, soothed almost to sleep by the peaceful rhythm of his breathing under her head. “It could have been something about the size of an average ice sculpture, but I overheard Director Fury at a networking event two months ago say that he was underwhelmed by this year’s graduating class. That no one had ‘the chops,’ which is utterly ridiculous, so I thought that I should do something as visually impressive as possible –”

Fitz nodded, fiddling with a few loose strands of her hair with his other hand. “Yeah, I know what you mean. To make an impact, you have to go to extremes.”

She turned her head awkwardly up to look at him, smiling. “Yes Fitz, exactly. It’s no good unless you throw yourself in all the way.”

His lips quirked up into a half-smile as he kept eye contact, but something sadder flickered behind his eyes. Jemma returned her head to a more comfortable position, wanting but hesitating to ask him what had drawn his mood down.

“Why do you want to go into the field?” Fitz asked, sounding curious without the edge that question would’ve once had. “What I mean is, you’re a biochemist, everything you need to do your job is in a lab.”

Jemma sighed. They’d been avoiding this kind of conversation for weeks; she’d wondered when it would come up. “But to understand something I need to see it with my own eyes – I need to be out there to see what needs fixing. I can’t help the world if I’m not in it, Fitz.” 

Somewhere nearby, the dull roar of a class being let out echoed across the quad. After a moment, he stopped her still-roving fingers and laid his hand over hers.

“I’ve been thinking, Jemma,” he started, then paused. She shifted her shoulders so she could look up at him more easily. Fitz glanced at her face, then turned his head up towards the tree and cleared his throat. “What if – I’d made different decisions? Back in junior year. What if we hadn’t fought that night? Where do you think we’d be, today?”

He flicked his eyes back to hers and Jemma inhaled slowly, wishing she could read him quite as easily as he seemed to read her. “I... don’t know.” 

“What if I’d listened when you tried to tell me...”

“What are you trying to say, Fitz?”

Fitz furrowed his brows and slid his fingers between hers, seemingly working up the momentum to say what he was thinking.

“Hi, Jemma.”

They both turned their heads to the tree’s left, almost in sync, staring at Grant as if they’d both forgotten they were in a public place. She sat up quickly and leaned back on her hands. “Hello.” 

Grant stood a meter or so away, and Jemma had to raise her hand to see his face against the bright sky. His hands were behind his back again, projecting a sense of feigned calm, and he glanced over her shoulder at Fitz and then back at her. “I just wanted to say good luck, for tonight. I know you’ve been working really hard on it, so...” Grant trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck.

Jemma nodded, surprised. This was Grant at his best – away from the other recruits and SHIELD power-players. “Thank you.” He gave her a small smile, and then gave Fitz a brief “bro-nod” before striding away across the quad.

“That was remarkably civil,” Fitz noted, as Jemma sat forward and hugged her knees to her chest. “Seems like he’s about ready to beg for forgiveness.” When she didn’t answer, he sat up and scooted over so he could see her face. “When’re you gonna tell him?”

Jemma pursed her lips. “Tonight,” she said decisively. “At the gala. Our break-up will be more believable if it’s public.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “And confessions are best done at moonlit parties, yeah?” Fitz smiled, clearly expecting her to laugh, but all she could muster was a hollow chuckle. “Hey,” he said, using her shoulder to turn her towards him. “You’ve been gloomy all week, whenever we’re out of the lab. What’s going on?” Jemma shook her head and stood up, brushing grass off her jeans and out of her hair. 

“I’m just worried about tonight. Everything has been leading up to this one night for months, and–”

“You’re feeling the pressure,” Fitz finished for her, picking up their books and standing. 

“Right.” She checked the time on her phone. “I have to go get my hair done soon, anyway.” As he shook out the sweater he’d been using as a pillow, he gave her a wry look. “You try styling this mop,” she retorted, waving at her infuriatingly straight hair. “Honestly, it’s half the reason I didn’t go to parties at first – curlers are my nemeses.” 

Fitz chuckled, and they set off in the direction of their dorm. “Hey, you do what you’ve got to do. I just roll out of bed looking _this good_ ,” he said, gesturing grandly at himself. Jemma laughed and swatted his arm, and a second later nervousness flitted over his face. “Actually... will you help with my hair again, for tonight?” 

Jemma gave him a long-suffering, teasing sigh. “Absolutely helpless. How did you ever manage without me?” 

He looked away and answered almost too quietly to hear. “Not very well.” Part of her wanted to squeeze his arm, or apologize, or say anything at all, but the moment passed. Fitz cleared his throat. “Have you thought about it? What you’re going to say to him?”

She glanced over at him and noted that his unoccupied hand was buried deep in his pocket.  He’d probably been trying to work out what he would say to Raina all week, and Jemma had the sudden realization that she hadn’t given her impending conversation with Grant any thought at all.

“No. Not really.”

“I’m surprised,” he replied lightly. “Jemma Simmons, going in without a plan.”

“Seems I’ve been doing that quite a lot recently,” she said, realizing the truth of that statement. They reached the stairs of the dormitory, and she stopped. Fitz turned, staring so intently into her eyes that she was almost sure he knew exactly what she was thinking, even though she wasn’t certain herself.

“And how has that been working out?” Fitz asked her quietly, their morning of relaxation before the party seeming more weighted every moment.

“I’m... not sure, yet. I’ll let you know.” She exhaled and tried to smile. “I’m going to go straight to the hairdressers – keep my books for me, please?”

Fitz nodded but then tutted at her as she started walking away. “No goodbye kiss?” He gestured at the groups of students standing at nearby building entrances. 

Jemma turned her head, willing away the pinpricks at the backs of her eyelids before she turned back to him. “Might as well start the break-up now,” she all but whispered before striding quickly in the direction of the bus stop. She took a deep breath and tried to pull up the emotional armor she’d been perfecting for the past year, but somehow it didn’t bring her the comfort that it once had.

 

\------

 

The sun had set but it was still too early for the moon to have risen, and the two scientists stood outside of the ballroom’s building, giving each other a silent pep talk. Jemma kept looking at the white rose corsage Fitz had given her when he knocked on her door ten minutes earlier. This wasn’t prom, but she hadn’t been able to make herself tell him so, and had instead slipped on the wristlet and given him a quick kiss on the cheek. He’d returned the books she’d left with him that morning when he picked her up; she’d had a moment of panic when she realized that her personal notebook had been tucked into one of her textbooks, but when Fitz didn’t act any differently she assumed that he hadn’t noticed it.

Fitz absently tapped his suit jacket over the inside pocket; he’d been doing that ever since they left the dormitory, as if he had something in there he didn’t want to forget. It was a piece of paper, Jemma knew that much from the slight crinkle it made, but she suspected it was something to do with what he was going to say to Raina and decided she didn’t really want to know.

They were standing face to face to the side of the entrance, using a tree to shield them from any prying eyes, and Fitz picked up both of Jemma’s hands, giving them a gentle squeeze. Jemma stared into Fitz’s eyes, unconsciously mapping the dips and shadows of his irises, knowing that this would probably be the last time they would stand like this, just the two of them taking strength from each other.

“Are you ready?” Fitz asked quietly.

“We’ll have to find out,” Jemma replied with a small grin, thinking briefly back to that moment right before their first public “date” a month ago. She pressed back against his hands briefly and then let him go, and busied herself with smoothing out her dress. The full-length, indigo skirt was made of a satiny material that Jemma was constantly trying not to wrinkle, on top of keeping track of the dress’s short gauze train. The dress would look excellent with the gala’s decor, but having her shoulders bare tonight just made her feel even more exposed. Jemma took in a deep breath and turned towards the entrance. “Let’s go.”

Fitz fell into step beside her, adjusting his jacket as they joined a small crowd of people arriving. Most of the guests were already inside; they’d waited to make sure that their impending performance would have enough witnesses to get the gossip mill churning quickly. As they stepped through the door side-by-side, Fitz reached for her hand, but Jemma pulled gently away and scanned the crowd for either of their exes. She could feel his eyes on her but refused to witness the sting of her small rejection; soon, he’d have her back, the girl who made him feel more special than anyone else ever had, and that was why they were doing this.

The room was decorated in silvery accents and cold colors, blue and purple lights shining across the high ceiling and small orb lanterns hovering above the guests. A large metal structure covered in a satin sheet stood to the side of the hall, looming over the gala as a reminder of the more serious aspects of any academic celebration, things like unity, cooperation, and learning. Soon, Jemma and Fitz’s work would be tested for the whole room to see – but they had a scene to perform first. Worrying about the success or failure of her efforts would have to wait a little longer. 

After a few moments of searching, Jemma couldn’t see either Grant or Raina. A warm hand closed around her forearm, and she turned her head towards Fitz, who was leaning towards her ear. “It’ll look bizarre if we just stand here. C’mon,” he murmured before tugging her in the direction of the dance floor.

Her protests died on her lips as he wrapped one arm around her waist and picked up her hand in his own, starting to move them side-to-side to the rhythm of the pop song crooning through the sound system. Jemma’s breath caught in her throat, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling when he leaned his head against hers, brushing her cheek with his own. Neither of them were dancers, but almost anyone could manage to mimic the languid couples’ dance popular worldwide.

Forgetting the intent behind this dance, Jemma closed her eyes, willing away the lump in her throat and committing everything she could to memory. The way he carefully held his hand on her lower back, up where it was proper, fingers shifting slightly as they swayed; the way his breath fanned loose strands of her hair against the back of her neck; the way he still smelled faintly of the lab’s disinfectant, and of something sweeter and vaguely minty; the way they were both exactly the right height to dance like this, slowly, in sync, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She wanted to record the dance like one of her experiments, noting every detail and analyzing their causes and effects, packing away every moment as samples of something that couldn’t be repeated.

When Jemma finally forced herself to open her eyes she saw Raina standing near the base of the display, facing away from them, and a knot twisted in her stomach. Just as she was about to say this out loud, her resolve crumbled for just a moment. “Fitz, can we talk later?” She whispered, trying to tamp down the desperate edge to her voice. “After the gala, or next week? I just –” She pulled back to look into his eyes, frowning as she faltered, not even sure what she’d wanted to say to begin with. “I feel like we have some unfinished business. If you don’t mind.”

Fitz let out a small laugh and nodded. “Yeah, okay. We’ll have to talk about this thing anyway –” He gestured to the display.

“Of course,” she said, feeling somewhat foolish, and took a deep breath. “Raina’s over there.” He turned to see where Jemma was looking and exhaled, stepping away and squaring his shoulders.

“Show time,” he muttered, and she smiled encouragingly.

“It’s going to work, Fitz – I can tell.” Jemma gave his arm a small squeeze before moving back. “Now, go get the girl of your dreams.”

A brief wince flashed over Fitz’s face, presumably because this meant that they were about to delve into their break-up, and he gave her a quick, closed-mouth smile. The fight they’d devised was short, but designed to be effective enough to both attract attention and then allow them to escape before a crowd formed.

“I can’t believe you want me to choose between you and going into the field,” Jemma shouted, backing away from Fitz, hoping that the loud music would disguise the stiffness in her voice.

“I need a lab to do my work, and so do you,” Fitz yelled back, his words sounding even more stilted than hers. Drawing from their own conversations had been his idea, much to Jemma’s surprise, but even that didn’t stop his performance from being only half-believable. “You can’t do everything!”

“I’m so sick of having this fight, over and over again! We’re finished,” Jemma replied, taking her cue to storm away through the crowd. She gave herself a few seconds to determine that their audience had returned to their own festivities, and then turned around to watch Fitz’s progress towards Raina. Just as she glimpsed Fitz through the crowd, someone tapped her shoulder. 

“Over so soon?” An unsubtle current of amusement ran through Vic’s voice and Jemma turned to see the woman standing next to her, champagne flute and smartphone in hand. 

Jemma shrugged and wrapped her fingers tightly around her white satin clutch to keep them from visibly trembling. “It would never have worked,” she said, hoping it would sound more convincing out loud. “We’re too similar.”

Vic sipped at her champagne, the pink strands of her otherwise dark hair standing out against her dress, and eyed Jemma. “Maybe I should go over there,” Vic mused, and Jemma turned away, not trusting herself to keep up her side of the charade if she was around Vic for much longer. “If he’s as good in bed as you say, I could consider slumming it a little in sci-ops.”

Part of the crowd shifted, then, giving Jemma a clear view of Fitz and Raina near the base of the sculpture. They were standing close together, holding hands, and the girl in yet another flower dress was speaking. Fitz watched Raina with that unwavering gaze of which Jemma had become so fond, leaving her with no doubt that their plan had played out exactly as she’d intended. 

“I think he’s taken,” Jemma said to Vic, who just shrugged and lifted up her phone. 

“Pity,” she replied without any real feeling. Vic glanced down at the empty bottom of her glass and slid past Jemma towards the bar. “Better luck next time.” Jemma didn’t even turn to see the spec-ops recruit go, too preoccupied was she with staring at the way Fitz was leaning closer to Raina. 

Something hard and cold settled into the pit of her stomach and Jemma finally let herself understand what she’d been feeling for the past week. She’d fallen for Leo Fitz, the grumpy, clumsy, brilliant engineer who had once been her best friend. Her original plan had stopped being relevant days ago; she’d known she wouldn’t go back to Grant, even if she hadn’t let herself accept it until she watched Fitz stand across from his now-current girlfriend.

It made no sense and yet all the sense in the world for her to love Fitz, and she was tired of fighting it. Three years of friendship, a devastating fight, and a year of dating someone else was more than enough denial for one person, in her opinion.

Raina reached up to Fitz’s cheek and Jemma spun around, wincing at the inexplicable physical pain she felt somewhere within her ribcage. She had things to do tonight, and mooning over someone she couldn’t be with wasn’t one of them. Taking a deep breath, she pushed down the hollowness nagging at her stomach and decided to occupy herself by checking on the status of the gala’s schedule. Before she could get far in the direction of the ballroom’s stage, however, she heard someone calling her name over the beat of a high-energy, insipid dance song.

When Jemma turned, she was greeted by a heavily breathing Grant, who looked as if he’d just been running. He straightened his tie, ran a hand through his gelled coif, and gave Jemma a blinding smile. “Vic just told me you broke up with Fitz.”

She chuckled – Vic was nothing if not predictable. “She wasn’t lying.”

Grant nodded and took a few steps towards Jemma, but as he reached his hand out she stepped back, keeping a few feet between them. He stopped and inhaled shakily. “Breaking up with you was the worst decision I’ve ever made, Jemma.” 

“I’m well aware of that,” she retorted, and he gave a quickly aborted laugh as he realized that she wasn’t teasing.

“I’ve missed you like hell.”

She tilted her head and tried to sound at least somewhat sympathetic. “I don’t know what you want me to do about that, honestly.”

“Let me make it up to you,” he murmured, clasping her left hand in both of his. Grant opened his mouth to continue, but Jemma quickly pressed her other hand over his mouth, stopping him.

“No.” She gave him a few moments to process it, then removed her hands and turned back in the direction she’d been going.

“What about getting into the field? How’re you gonna do that without me?”

Jemma clenched her jaw and whipped her head back around to look at Grant, whose eyes had darkened from a few moments ago. This was the expression he used when he trained, guarded and calculating, and Jemma wondered if trying to convince her to come back to him had been some sort of an act – although to what purpose, she couldn’t determine.

“There’s more to being in a relationship, Grant, than who the other person knows.”

“You need me,” he insisted, and stepped back towards her. This time, she didn’t back away.

“I don’t need anyone to get me the career I deserve.” For the first time, possibly ever, Jemma actually believed herself. She didn’t need to lean on anyone to succeed anymore – and especially not on Grant. Everything she wanted was within her reach now if she worked hard enough. ( _Except for Fitz_ , a small voice whispered in her head.)

“It’s him,” he mused, studying her face like she’d once seen him do to the bulls-eye sheets from a shooting range. “Fitz, that scientist. It is, isn’t it? You didn’t do the breaking up –”

“Goodbye, Grant,” Jemma interrupted, and slid away through the crowd fast enough that he couldn’t follow her. No matter how firmly she told herself that there had been no actual break up, the thought still made her want to run blindly out of the ballroom and keep going until she couldn’t draw breath. Rather than give in to her own maudlin instincts, however, Jemma continued to the side of the stage where she could see Dean Coulson talking to a stage manager of some sort.

“Good evening, sir,” she greeted him, and he smiled at her.

“Evening, Simmons. How’s the gala going?”

“Eventful,” she replied before she could stop herself, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Anything I need to know about?” 

Jemma shook her head and chuckled. “Absolutely not, sir. I just wanted to see where we are in the schedule.”

Coulson glanced down at his watch. “Good timing. We were going to call you backstage in about five minutes. There are a few speakers first, and then President Hill will introduce you.”

“Excellent, sir.”

The stage manager tapped Coulson on the shoulder, muttered something into his ear, and he nodded. “Why don’t you grab yourself a drink and come back,” he directed at Jemma, waving towards the bar. “They’re fixing something with the sound, apparently.”

She opened her mouth to decline, about to mention how she isn’t thirsty or would rather remain clear headed for the light show, or something else, but all that flew out of her mind as she glanced absently toward the bar. Jemma did a double-take as she saw two very familiar figures standing next to each other at the base of the enormous, decorative structure, down the length of the ballroom from her. Grant was leaning threateningly over Fitz, who was staring defiantly back at the much-taller man, and Jemma could see even from here that they were shouting at each other.

Without a further thought, she hastened towards them, gripping part of the dress in one hand so she wouldn’t trip. After only a few moments, Fitz reared back and punched Grant squarely in the jaw, the force behind his hit sending the other man stumbling backwards into the base of the structure. Jemma gasped and began to run, dodging dancers and guests, reaching for her skirts with both hands to keep them from impeding her.

As Jemma skidded inelegantly to a stop, Fitz was bent over at the waist, hugging his right wrist to his chest, eyes squeezed shut and severe pain etched on his face. Jemma immediately reached over to him, but before he even saw her she heard Grant speak from somewhere to her right. “I’m gonna end you, kid,” he growled, wiping a thin trickle of blood off the corner of his mouth.

“Grant,” Jemma squeaked, panicked at the thought of him truly going after Fitz, and held a hand out as if she could physically stop him herself. Fitz looked up then and saw Jemma standing in front of Grant, hand pressed against his chest. She glanced back at him and motioned subtly for him to stay quiet. “I have no idea what happened here, but, please, Grant, don’t make this any worse.” He just stared past her at Fitz, who straightened and glared defiantly back.

Jemma glanced between them again, and pushed gently but firmly on Grant’s chest, desperate to get him further away from Fitz, successfully moving him a few steps back. “You know there’s no real physical contest here. Please, Grant. Whatever it is isn’t worth it.” She moved over to get in between Grant’s line of sight and Fitz, making eye contact and breaking theirs. Grant stared down at Jemma, a muscle in his jaw working while he thought. After a few moments, he released the tension in his shoulders and Jemma sighed, leaning briefly on his chest in her relief. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“I better not see him again,” Grant said, taking a few steps backwards. “That’s for you, Jemma.” All she could do was nod as he turned around and disappeared into the crowd.

The breath she’d been holding burst out of her and she suddenly had a strong desire to sit right down on the floor as all the strength left her legs. She resisted the temptation, though, and turned back to Fitz, remembering his wrist. He was leaning against the metal posts of the structure, using his fingers to press tenderly against the bones or muscles of his wrist and wincing. “Oh, Fitz,” she murmured, and although there was no way he could have heard her from that distance, he looked up at her, causing something to clutch tightly in her chest. Fitz didn’t move forward, watching Jemma’s progress in his direction with wary interest, and she would have given a limb to know exactly what he was thinking when he stared at her like that.

“Dr. Simmons!” Dean Coulson jogged up behind her. “Everything’s ready. We need you backstage.” 

Jemma pursed her lips and turned towards Fitz, who was just staring impassively back at her. She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed. “I’ll be right there, sir.” Around the other side of the structure, she could see Raina approaching, and took some small comfort that at least someone would take care of Fitz, even if she couldn’t. 

“Now, Simmons,” Coulson said, brusque and impatient. Jemma gave one last regretful look back at Fitz, who was staring determinedly at the floor, and turned to follow the dean to the stage. Year-end parties were famed for being highly charged but this one was turning out to be particularly unusual, and Jemma didn’t want to think about what else could possibly go wrong.


	6. Everything You Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprises, apologies, and a resolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't quite the end of the story - you've got a short epilogue coming up later this week - but here's the end of the "movie," as it were. I hope you've all enjoyed reading this half as much as I've enjoyed writing it. :-)

Academia may be beneficial for many reasons, not the least of which was shared learning and the pursuit of knowledge, but its penchant for overblown pomp and self-congratulation was currently driving Jemma completely mad. It had been almost an hour since they’d called her backstage and still they weren’t ready to introduce her. Normally this might not have bothered her quite so much, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Fitz, worrying whether someone had properly examined his wrist and wondering what on earth had made him angry enough to punch Grant. She’d been rolling the scene around in her head the entire time she’d been backstage but still she only had questions and no answers – because, of course, she was stuck waiting behind these bloody gigantic black drapes.

Just as she was about to pull out her phone to text Skye to go check up on Fitz for her (a truly desperate move, considering the merciless teasing she’d inevitably receive as a result), a stage manager waved her over. Academy President Maria Hill was finishing her speech about interdisciplinary cooperation and was just about to introduce Jemma.

“Please give a warm welcome to one of SHIELD’s strongest graduating assets, Dr. Jemma Simmons.”

As applause rose from the audience, she smoothed out a few new wrinkles in her dress and strode out to the podium, slipping only a little uneasily into her guarded public persona. Jemma spoke about the gifts the Academy’s students have to offer, how their potential is best achieved when the different schools and departments cooperated, and how the end of the academic year was the perfect time to celebrate such partnerships.

“With that, I present to you a symbol of interdisciplinary unity –” She raised her arm towards the enormous display, and, as planned, the cloth covering dropped away, unveiling the large white orb set above the metal struts and supports. What was not as planned, however, was _Fitz_ sitting at the top of the structure. 

Jemma dropped her hand in surprise, and the entire audience turned to see the Scottish scientist perched atop the statue, looking rather like one of those bookends that hang off the edges of bookshelves. A quiet hum of gossip arose from the guests, and Jemma cupped one hand over her eyes, squinting to see what on earth he was doing. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows; she thought she saw a flash of white at his injured wrist. When the covering had dropped, Fitz had turned to the stage, and Jemma would swear that he was looking straight down at her, just for a moment, before he turned back to whatever he was doing.

The structure was tall enough, and the globe’s light bright enough, that Jemma couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but he seemed to be fixing something within the dispersal mechanism’s access panel. After a moment’s more of work, he closed the hatch and wound his hand in a circular motion, signaling that the person at the control switch should try again. Sure enough, a quiet whirr began and the light show burst onto the gala’s ceiling, throwing delicate fingers of light and shadow reminiscent of the aurora borealis far above the audience’s heads. A gasp of awe rippled through the room and then gave way to thunderous applause.

Jemma got the sense that she probably should have turned to President Hill for an inane hand shake or photograph, but she continued watching Fitz, who was beginning to shift at the top of the sculpture. He grabbed on to one of the larger aluminum beams and settled his feet, and before Jemma could begin to panic he’d started sliding down to the floor, using one leg to brace against the structure. Much to her shock, Fitz actually made it to the floor in one piece, only stumbling off the beam a couple feet from the ground.

The way he bent over and held his arm once he was standing again made Jemma think that he’d hurt his wrist in doing that, and she made a mental note to scold him later for being so foolish as to _slide down_ that entire ridiculous display like he was surfing. And then she realized that she probably wouldn’t see him later because he’d be too busy reuniting with Raina.

Remembering that she was on stage, she gave the still-applauding audience a smile and a wave before retreating to the wings.

“Dr. Simmons!” President Hill jogged slightly to catch up to her, Dean Coulson following close behind. “That’s some impressive work up there.” Hill motioned up to the ceiling, where the second stage of the light show was progressing nicely. 

Jemma gave them a polite smile. “Thank you, M’am.”

“That’s the kind of production that gets the attention of the field agent evaluators,” Coulson added, folding his arms approvingly across his chest.

“Much of the credit should really go to Dr. Leopold Fitz,” Jemma interjected, turning to Hill.

The President glanced at Coulson. “I understood that you were responsible for designing the chemical –”

“If it weren’t for him, there would have been no show,” she insisted firmly. “He saved the entire endeavor.”

Hill raised an eyebrow and shared a look with Coulson before turning away. “Well, good job anyway, Simmons. I’ll be proud to hand your diploma next month.” She was gone before Jemma could respond, leaving her to smile awkwardly at the dean.

Coulson was giving her a penetrating stare, and she twisted the corner of her clutch. He hadn’t been her actual dean since freshman year, before students are divided by school and specialty, but he’d always kept tabs on her well-being, and she suspected that she was about to get lectured in one way or another.

“You know, Simmons, I seem to remember thinking once that two inseparable scientists were going to take the Academy by storm – together.” He paused, gauging her reaction. She wasn’t sure if she’d given anything away, but the sadness she’d been burying all evening was threatening to resurface. “Seriously,” he continued, “you and Fitz used to do everything together. What happened?”

Jemma shifted her gaze away from him, staring blankly out at the full ballroom. “Life, I suppose, sir,” she answered and gave him a small, shaky smile before exiting the backstage into the crowd.

As she watched her peers enjoying themselves, a variety of maudlin thoughts began to creep into her head and she rolled her eyes at herself. Jemma refused to be _that_ girl; she’d already indulged a variety of new, pathetic romantic tendencies enough tonight. Suddenly, she knew exactly where to go to clear her head before finishing out the evening at the gala as was expected of her. She hadn’t been there in months, but it was one of the only places on campus where she had ever felt completely at ease.

 

\------

 

Once, Jemma had heard an older student joke about the wilted grandeur of “the Treehouse” (also known as the library’s roof) and how it had been all but abandoned when new rooftop gardens had been added to one of the comm-ops buildings. It would never have occurred to her to visit the roof on her own, but sometime during the first two months of their friendship during freshman year, Fitz had showed up at her door with a six pack and insisted she follow him. Someone had told him it was directly facing west for the best view of the sunset, and that no one else was ever up there. They’d sat on dilapidated wooden crates, facing the horizon, drinking peacefully, and taking comfort in each other’s company while the sun disappeared. This became their own private tradition; whenever one could tell the other was stressed, they’d show up with drinks or take-away Chinese food and just say, “Treehouse.”

Jemma supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised to see Fitz sitting sideways on the low concrete wall lining the roof’s edge, fiddling with an empty champagne flute. No matter the distance between them this past year, they still thought in almost the same way.

Clearing her throat, she stepped out of the stairway and into the light of the lone bulb gracing the roof. She smiled nervously as he turned to her. “Can’t seem to get away from each other, can we?”

Fitz stood hastily, putting the glass onto the ground and brushing dirt off his hands. His jacket was lying nearby, not quite folded neatly, and his sleeves were still rolled up, giving the impression of either being roguish or childish. He chuckled awkwardly and crossed his arms over his chest. “I -- the Treehouse is probably the only quiet place on campus tonight.”

She caught a glimpse of his bandages and strode over to him, reaching gently for his wrist. Fitz winced, but let her feel tenderly through the cloth for a moment before withdrawing his hand and putting it into his pocket, as if to hide it. “It’s fine –” 

“Did the nurse examine it?”

“Just pulled something. It’ll heal –” 

“In a couple days, if that’s what it actually is.” She stared at where the bandage peeked out of his pocket and pursed her lips, trying to convince herself that she didn’t _need_ to examine it herself, even if she wanted to. 

“How’s Ward?” He asked, his tone dry and clipped.

Jemma started, remembering abruptly that there had been someone else involved in the fight – someone with whom she was supposed to be reuniting. “Fine,” she answered with a smile. “The man has bones like granite.”

“He might as well be a living statue,” Fitz deadpanned.

Ignoring the urge to laugh, Jemma searched his eyes, not sure anymore how best to get the truth out of him when he was like this. “What happened?”

He looked away from her and shook his head, jaw muscles just barely visibly clenching in the faint lamplight. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Jemma murmured, but he just shook his head and kept his gaze studiously away from her face. The silence stretched on as Jemma debated internally whether to press him further. Her curiosity was almost overwhelming, but then she wondered if Fitz’s reasons were really relevant at all. No matter what had happened in that ballroom, it wasn’t going to change her mind about not dating Grant – or about wanting to be with Fitz – and she decided to try changing the subject. “So,” she started tentatively, “how did it go with you and Raina?”

Fitz let out a short bark of laughter, surprising Jemma, and then smiled in a way that she couldn’t tell was genuine or half broken. “Great,” he answered, “everything worked out.”

“Ah,” she said, smiling. “That’s good, then.”

The emptiness that had been gnawing at her ever since she saw Fitz standing with his mysterious, alluring girlfriend in the ballroom’s muted light returned in full force, and she gripped onto her stomach as if to squeeze the feeling back inside. Two weeks ago, she’d thought that everything would make sense once she finally understood her own feelings, or why her life had seemed upside down and yet just right ever since this whole thing had started. In reality, the knowledge that she wanted to be with Fitz but couldn’t was threatening to swallow her whole, and instead of letting the panic take over she made a snap decision.

“I’m so sorry, Fitz,” she blurted out, taking an unconscious step towards him.

He frowned, startled by the ardency of her tone. “What?” 

“For the past year. For abandoning you, abandoning our friendship –” Understanding dawned on him, and he started to shake his head, but she barreled over him, needing to get the whole thing out before her voice failed her again. “I still want to go into the field, more than almost anything else, but I forgot what it was like to truly enjoy myself when I wasn’t in a lab working – I didn’t know how to be myself without you, Fitz.”

“Jemma, you don’t –” 

“I did all these things that I don’t care about, the parties and networking events and all these nights that I can’t even distinguish from each other –” 

“Let me –”

“And none of them, not even if I put all the best nights together into one, ever equaled when we used to just sit in your room for hours –”

“Simmons –”

“And talk about our favorite classes, or new ideas, or how old we were when we knew we were different from everyone else –”

“ _Jemma_!” Fitz shouted, startling her into silence. “Stop, stop apologizing, please.” 

“But –”

“No,” he interrupted firmly. “I should never have forced that choice on you – it was bollocks, and wrong, and you had every right to be angry.”

“But I was the one who started –”

“Yeah, alright, you handled it badly, too – we’re both complete shit at this stuff, right? Anything out of the lab is beyond us.” He gave her a small smile and exhaled. “It took me far too long to understand why I should never have forced you to make that choice, but I get it now, I do. So you shouldn’t apologize to me. _I’m_ sorry.”

Jemma smiled gratefully at him for a moment before dropping her gaze to her fingers, which were getting thoroughly tangled in the thin strap of her clutch. 

“I should’ve chosen you every day, Fitz,” she murmured without looking up. “Raina’s smarter than I am in that respect.” She chuckled and then tried not to panic, as she realized she’d just compared her feelings to that of his girlfriend. But when she met his eyes, his gaze was inscrutable, eyes glinting hauntingly in the sparse light. 

One of the things that she’d always liked about Fitz, right from the very beginning, was his approachability. He may have been an awkward eighteen year old who used too much science jargon for the average layperson, but something about his accent or his curly hair, or his insistence that everything else came second to science, made him seem open to her in a way that no one else on campus had. Looking at him now, though, in the semi-darkness of the Treehouse, there was something layered over that comfort that she was missing, an uncertainty about their standing or the distortion of her own desire. That ache was starting to return, and Jemma was getting worse and worse at reasoning her way past it. 

Escape was beginning to seem like her only option, so she held out her hand and tried to keep her voice from shaking. “Friends again, then?”

Fitz’s lips twitched up at the corner, and he shook her hand. “Friends.”

Another moment passed. “I’m so glad you got what you wanted tonight, Leo,” she whispered, and reached over to press her lips against his cheek. “Goodnight.” She could feel him watching her as she fled to the staircase, but, as was their norm before this past month, he didn’t say anything and she didn’t turn around. They were essentially back at square one, and Jemma hated it.

 

\------

 

Jemma wandered aimlessly through the still-lively campus, gravitating towards its darkest spaces, the ones devoid of dancing or merriment. Soon her absence at the gala would be noticed, but she couldn’t quite convince herself to return to the crowded ballroom. Her shoes dangled from the same hand she was using to lift the hem of her dress away from the ground, and she padded carefully over the stone paths in her bare feet, making sure to avoid any dropped bottles or trash. The stones were soothing and cool and helped her fight for a calm that her brain was studiously avoiding. As she rounded another unlit corner, she laughed to herself about her own moroseness, bitterly amused by the triteness of her own behavior. Part of her wanted to give in and return to her dorm room, where she could put cheesy romantic music on repeat on her iPod for as long as she liked, but the rest of her was just mining those little thoughts as an excuse for using herself as a mental punching bag.

After her only-slightly-manic burst of laughter, a muffled noise of surprise emitted from the corner she’d just passed, followed by the sound of clothes being adjusted. Shortly, Skye leaned into the light of the path. “Jemma? What’re you doing here?”

Then Trip sauntered out of the corner, and Jemma grinned. “I think I could ask you the same question.” Skye’s lavender lace dress was crinkled and lay unevenly along the side, and Trip’s tie and shirt were completely mussed up, giving Jemma a clear idea of what had been going on before her small moment of insanity had interrupted them.

Trip wrapped his arms around Skye’s shoulders from behind, completely unperturbed by the interruption. “Hey there, Simmons.”

Jemma raised an eyebrow at Skye, who just lifted her chin in defiance. “So it’s a boy, then.” When Trip gave her a vaguely insulted look, she explained. “Skye’s refused to tell me who she’s been dating for months, periodically hinting that it was a girl.”

Trip snorted and leaned his chin on Skye’s head. “There was a girl at one point, but _someone_ scared her away by not mentioning that she had a boyfriend. Who she’d also invited.”

Skye was trying very hard not to look embarrassed, and shrugged. “Explanations take away from the spontaneity.”

“Yeah, but they also take away from, you know, actually having sex.”

“Don’t even pretend that you were upset about having me all to yourself,” she retorted, tilting her head up to glare mockingly at him. He leaned down and kissed her, smiling all the while, and Jemma shook her head in amusement. Now that she knew who Skye had been sneaking off to see all this time, her friend’s reasons for hiding the relationship became abundantly clear: She hadn’t wanted to bring up the complicated dynamics of dating the best friend of Jemma’s ex-best friend. Just thinking that sentence made Jemma’s brain hurt.

“So,” Skye said, gently swatting Trip away so she could turn to her friend. “Why’re you walking around campus by yourself? Need some thinking time after the arrest?”

Jemma frowned. “What arrest?”

Trip whistled. “Girl, you missed the excitement of the evening.”

“You mean my speech about interdisciplinary cooperation wasn’t the highlight?” Jemma deadpanned, making the other two chuckle. “Alright then, what happened?” 

“They arrested Raina for conspiring to sabotage your display thing,” Skye explained, and Jemma’s mouth actually dropped open. “Rumor has it – and Trip won’t agree until he talks to Fitz –”

“I like my gossip straight from the horse’s mouth, thanks,” he said breezily, apparently not bothered by Skye sharing the rumor.

“She’d been trying to convince Fitz to do her dirty work for her, since he was working with you on it and had access, and all that jazz, but he refused, so I guess she found someone else to do it right before the gala started. When he figured out what she’d done, he reported it, and gave them some kind of evidence, and then fixed whatever they’d sabotaged. That’s why he was on the light thing right before the show,” she added as an afterthought.

“Sounds like my boy,” Trip said, “but I still want to hear it from him.”

“She was using him,” Jemma whispered, feeling suddenly lightheaded and letting her shoes drop to the concrete path. 

“Yeah – looks like your plan was kinda moot after all. They are totally never ever getting back together.” Skye seemed to realize that the joke may have been a little off-color, and tried to look apologetic (and failed). “Speaking of, how did your part of the plan work? Are you and Grant together again?”

“No.” Jemma could hear her pulse pounding in her head, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion as she turned in the direction of the library. “I have to go.”

“What?” Skye’s confusion was audible, but Jemma didn’t wait to explain, lifting her dress to her shins and running as fast as she could in bare feet. “But your shoes –!”

Then Skye was out of range, and all Jemma could hear was the rustle of satin, the quiet slap of her feet against concrete, the frantic rush of blood in her veins, and a repeated phrase speeding through her head: _He’s not with Raina, he’s not with Raina, he’s not with Raina._

When she entered the smaller side-quad and the library came into view, however, she skidded to a stop, tripping slightly over a branch hidden by a nearby streetlamp’s shadowy glow, and swore into the silence. What if he wasn’t there anymore? And, more importantly, what would she say to him? Jemma raised her hands to her neck, her default pose to calm herself down, and turned around in the direction she’d just run. She should just talk to him tomorrow, give herself the night to think it over. Then she turned back. But what if he _was_ there now? It could be just like ripping a band-aid off, and she’d finally know once and for all. She turned away again, cursing her nerves and wishing she’d just kept running.

“Jemma?” This time when she turned around, Fitz was ambling towards her from the library’s side entrance, suit jacket slung over one arm. “Why are you wearing down a path in the grass in the middle of the night?”

She resisted the urge to laugh and waited for him to get within a few feet of her. “It seems that you haven’t been telling me everything,” she replied, the tangible fear of ‘ _what if he says no?_ ’ threatening to completely derail her.

Fitz grimaced, knowing exactly what she was talking about, and dipped his head. “I – yeah, I didn’t want... I was going to tell you tomorrow, after the gala. I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

Something rippled through her chest; he hadn’t told her because he knew how important the gala was to her. That’s probably why he hadn’t reported it to begin with – the hope that his refusal of Raina would mean the light show could be produced without a hitch. Darling, thoughtful, wonderful Fitz, knowing that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted and still trying to help Jemma’s plan succeed.

“Then you’re not with Raina,” she said, taking a tentative step forward.

He studied her face in light of the streetlamp. “No. Not.”

“That’s good.” She hated the way her voice sounded so breathless, the way the adrenaline coursing through her veins was making her feel so shaky, and, most of all, the way that she still couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking.

“You were wrong, before,” he interjected, taking a couple bold steps towards her. 

“About what?” Less than two feet stood between them now and tension thrummed in that empty space, neither sure which one would close the distance. Jemma felt her breath coming in short little bursts as she stared back into Fitz’s eyes, hoping that maybe she was reading him correctly this time. 

“I didn’t get what I wanted – I mean, she wasn’t what I wanted,” Fitz said, his voice unsteady, and Jemma realized that, of course, he was nervous, too. He had to be, because in some ways they were just the same, even when they didn’t know it. A year had been enough time for them to both figure out who they wanted to be when they were on their own, and now Jemma was ready to find herself alongside Fitz and to hold as tight to him as she possibly could.

She took the last step forward, closing the space between them and pulling one hand into both of hers. “What _do_ you want?”

He leaned his forehead against hers, twisting their fingers together, and took a deep breath. “You, Jemma. I just need you.”

Her smile could have lit up the entire campus and it stretched so wide across her face that her cheeks hurt. Unable to find just the right words, Jemma pressed fervent kisses across every centimeter of his face that she could reach, feeling his own grin stretch under her hands. Before she could move away, Fitz turned and captured her lips with his, pressing slow, light kisses as he wound his arms around her waist. She stretched her arms around his neck but had to pull back from his kiss, because she’d started giggling and wasn’t sure she could stop. Fitz just smiled back at her giddiness and nuzzled her nose with his, and Jemma Simmons was suddenly quite sure that she’d never been this happy before in her entire life.

“And you, Fitz. I need you, too,” she whispered, bouncing on her feet and watching his eyes light up in return. 

He chuckled. “What happened to Leo?”

She pulled back, mouth open in an “ _oh_ ” – she’d used his first name at the Treehouse and hadn’t even realized it. Fitz was smiling, thumbs brushing gently along the curve of her back, and she leaned in again, willing away her blush.

“Leo, then,” she murmured, “I need you, _Leo_.”

Jemma wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, wrapped in each other’s arms, forehead-to-forehead, nose-to-nose, lips just barely brushing as they breathed. The night continued on around them, filled with the faint strains of music and laughter, everything else feeling incredibly distant and completely irrelevant.


	7. Epilogue - At the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thanks so much to MK for all her help in editing and encouraging me! 
> 
> A small note that any familiar dialogue below is from the show itself, although any changes to it are mine.

After working for her entire academic life to get here, Jemma was one hour into being a field op for SHIELD, and the entire venture seemed almost too good to be true. Or it would, anyway, if Fitz would stop being quite so infuriating. A ground team was assisting with the set up of their shiny new lab, but he refused to accept anyone’s help with his equipment, muttering incoherently (incoherently, at least, to anyone who wasn’t Jemma) about untested weaponry and clumsy bastards.

They had graduated over two years ago now, although it hardly seemed like that much time had passed. The weeks after the gala had sped by in a blur, and, as Jemma had predicted, without Grant’s help she was unable to qualify for the field right after graduation from the Academy. Instead, she and Fitz signed up together for field training in higher-level Sci-Ops and worked themselves to the bone on a variety of field-required skills at which neither of them naturally excelled. After twenty-two months of training, testing, and a little bit of science on the side, they took their field tests and, much to Jemma’s vexation, both failed miserably.

Skye had offered on more than one occasion to just hack her way into the Sci-Ops field scores and fix FitzSimmons’ test results. Although Jemma refused to actually cheat (networking her way past requirements was about as far as she was willing to go in that regard), she finally took up Skye’s offer of help. If she was going to keep working to get into the field, Jemma _had_ to know why she had failed. Being able to help Fitz improve, of course, was also important – but she was nervous about involving him any further in these particular shenanigans, just in case it all went horribly wrong and she found herself trapped by some gigantic anti-file-reading robot that Skye assured her almost-definitely didn’t exist.

One sunny afternoon, Skye orchestrated a distraction big enough to allow Jemma to slip into the filing room where the field examiners kept their records. The distraction Skye provided – blasting old Britney Spears singles at full volume on all of the campus screens and speakers – had been just aggravating enough to get everyone out of the office. After a short search, Jemma found her and Fitz’s files, surprised to see them binder-clipped together, and flipped hers open. They could have failed on anything, really – physical skills, undercover abilities, or even something as simple as following procedure in dangerous situations – so Jemma almost dropped the file when she saw that they had actually scraped by in every category. 

At the bottom of her scorecard was a neat, handwritten note: _“Although Simmons’ extra study has well prepared her for field operations, the (albeit undefined) nature of her relationship with Leopold Fitz means that this examiner cannot give either of them a passing mark. Time and again, in both their training exercises and the examination itself, they have demonstrated a concerted refusal to put S.H.I.E.L.D.’s operations above the safety of each other. Despite the skills they have to offer our field teams, this means that they are undoubtedly unsuited for field work._ ” 

Jemma was completely dumbfounded. She’d managed to slip out of the file room before Skye’s distraction finished, but she had wandered aimlessly through campus for hours after that, trying to reconcile her feelings of pride (in the apparent strength of her and Fitz’s relationship) with the crushing knowledge that this meant that she would never be able to go into the field _with_ him. Could they stand to be separated for most of their working lives? She just didn’t know. 

Luckily, Jemma never had to find out. It seemed that Dean Coulson had actually watched her sneak into the file room, which he told her when he called them into his office and offered them a position on his new field team. The Academy had recently undergone a small scandal with certain training agents attempting to undermine S.H.I.E.L.D.’s system, and Coulson had decided that his talents – and, apparently, theirs – would be better utilized outside of the academic system. He’d just recruited Skye, an advisee for whom he’d always had a particular fondness, and Dean May, who was also leaving her position at the Academy. When Coulson mentioned that he was still looking for a specialist, Fitz encouraged him to consider Trip, who had been successfully completing field missions for the past year.

Of course, both scientists readily accepted Coulson’s offer, but before he let them leave the office he’d given them a strict, brusque lecture about keeping their relationship professional while on missions. After one dire warning that if either of them ever allowed their relationship to endanger the lives of civilians or their teammates they’d be off the team in a heartbeat, Coulson had smiled and told them to report for duty in one week.

So here they were, setting up the equipment in their field lab, while Fitz muttered to himself about a variety of problems Jemma was sure were mostly imagined. This shiny new lab, in fact, was located on an airborne mobile command station affectionately nicknamed “the Bus.” Jemma wasn’t sure who had settled on that name, although she did have a vivid memory of being at the meeting where Coulson vetoed the idea of using an acronym. (Fitz had suggested A.M.C.S., which seemed logical to Jemma until Skye started chanting “amoks, amoks, amoks” over the meeting table and May’s eyes narrowed so severely that Jemma wondered how the former Dean could possibly still see.) 

As Jemma lifted an ungainly rifle off of one of her boxes, Fitz appeared out of nowhere to snatch it out of her hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, watch it! That’s the new Night-Night gun.”

She rolled her eyes, and started unpacking the box. “Well, it’s on my stuff and it doesn’t work, and there’s no way we’re calling it the Night-Night gun –” 

Fitz stood at the corner of the table next to her, hugging the gun to himself as if to protect it from her slander. “The bullets work – non-lethal, heavy stopping power, break up under the subcutaneous tissue –”

“Oh, with a dose of only point-one microliters of dendrotoxin! I’m not Hermione, I can’t create instant paralysis with that.” Her voice was teasing but stern; this was a conversation they’d had repeatedly over the past two days, and it was starting to grate at her nerves. “You should’ve run the specs by me before building the molds –”

Talking over her, Fitz’s nerves seemed to be getting the better of him as well. “The bullets are hollow, it’s a marvel that can keep them from breaking apart in the chamber!”

“Fitzsimmons!” 

They both snapped their heads around in unison to see Coulson standing at the lab’s sliding doors. “Wheels up in twenty. Skye’s meeting us after her exams are over, so we’re just gonna pick up a quick oh-eight-four for today.” Jemma raised her eyebrow at the concept of hunting down a “quick” unknown-and-probably-dangerous object. He glanced down at the rifle Fitz was still holding to his chest. “Nice gun,” Coulson said. Fitz hastily loosened his grip and opened his mouth, presumably to describe his new toy, but Coulson was already striding away, clapping Trip on the back before jogging up the metal staircase. Trip grinned and waved to the scientists before following his superior officer. 

Fitz turned smugly to Jemma. “ _Nice gun_ , he said.” 

“Yes, and remind me why that means it’s deserving of a horrendous name?” She continued sorting through the medical supplies in the box, hoping idly that she’d never have to use any of this on her team members.

He placed the gun on the table and planted his hands on his hips, glaring at her. “Night-Night gun is descriptive! It clearly indicates the purpose for which the gun is being used –” 

“Oh, like a weaponized lullaby. Yes, that does make sense, well done, you.”

“Well, it’s better than the one you suggested, ‘dendrotoxin pellet delivery system’ or whatever –”

“That wasn’t a title suggestion, it was just the classification –” Jemma threw her hands up in the air and groaned. “UGH. You are going to drive me crazy, Leopold Fitz!”

Much to her surprise, the expression on Fitz’s face changed from vaguely annoyed to playful, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Isn’t that the idea?” Jemma blushed, and Fitz used her distraction to pull her against him, placing a chaste kiss on her lips. “And it’s staying the Night-Night gun.”

Before Jemma could get a protest out, however, Fitz kissed her again, easily slanting her mouth open in a way that still made her pulse race. She was convinced she’d never tire of his lips, of his hand pressed gently against the back of her neck, of the rough noise he made in the back of his throat whenever she teased at his lips with her tongue.

A few moments passed before they both remembered almost simultaneously that there were still people walking in and out of the loading bay, sorting last minute supplies, and they pulled just apart enough to breathe. Fitz curled his hand into the hair behind Jemma’s ear and smiled in a way that told her he was just as happy as she was, his eyes shining in the lab’s fluorescent lights.

He glanced behind her and chuckled. “So, who’re we making jealous?”

Jemma laughed and turned her head to see the half-dozen people moving around the loading bay. Since they’d realized that their scheme had only succeeded in fooling themselves, it had become a joke of theirs they made whenever they kissed out of the privacy of their rooms. 

She turned back to him and grinned, brushing her thumb along his jawline. “Everyone, Leo. Everyone.”

Jemma pressed a long, gentle kiss to his lips before stepping away and returning to her work. As she watched Fitz turn to one of his own boxes, smiling like a complete loon, she couldn’t help but think that her plan had worked very well indeed, even if it hadn’t turned out exactly as she’d expected. After all, field work was well known for being thoroughly unpredictable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks!

**Author's Note:**

> All the titles of this work will be 90's pop songs. Because of reasons.


End file.
